Pumpkin Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting & Pistachios

 

I’ve got a confession to make. Well, if anyone knows me well enough, they’d already know that I’m addicted to Pinterest. There. I said it. I’m addicted to Pinterest. I don’t always look at it as often as I would like but I love looking at all the beautiful recipes out there from the wonderful people I follow. And nothing has filled my Pinterest feed more than pumpkin recipes. Anyone would think it was Fall in the northern hemisphere! I was totally inspired for a sweet pumpkin cake.

 

 

In Australia, pumpkin is a very popular vegetable (also known as butternut squash). Nearly as popular as potato. We enjoy it mashed, baked, as a soup, in pasta, or salads. We love it and eat it all year round. You can’t buy it in a tin in the regular supermarket. I think only specialist US grocery stores might stock it. I’m a bit suss about eating it out of a tin. I much prefer the fresh stuff. I had a bit left in the fridge and steamed it in the microwave, then mashed it which produced a cup full. Just enough for a Pumpkin Cake.

 

 

I also had some wonderful pistachios in the pantry which I thought would compliment the spicy pumpkin cake.  I had a lot of trouble shelling the pistachios. A lot were going in my mouth and not in the bowl for the cake!

 

 

I used my ‘forever faithful’ cake recipe, making a few adjustments and baked in a square pan. I find it produces a lot more pieces of cake for hungry mouths.

 

 

You can’t beat a cream cheese frosting on just about any cake and I had all the ingredients for just that.

 

Pumpkin Cake topped with Cream Cheese Frosting & Pistachios

• 1 and half cups plain flour
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 cup pureed/mashed pumpkin
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 6 tablespoons oil (I use canola)
• 1 teaspoon bicarb soda
• half teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup pistachio nuts, finely chopped

Frosting:

• 1 tub softened cream cheese
• 1/2 cup whipping cream
• 1/2 cup icing (powdered) sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 180 C (375 F). 
2. Grease a cake pan well. 
3. Put the flour, spices, sugar, pumpkin and water in a bowl. 
4. Add vanilla, vinegar, oil, baking soda and salt. Mix until mixture is runny.
5. Pour into the tin. Bake 35 to 40 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes then take out of tin.
6. Mix frosting ingredients together and when cake has cooled, top with cream cheese frosting and sprinkle with finely chopped pistachio nuts

 

 

 

We’re having a bit of a heat wave here in Australia for the last month of Spring so we couldn’t be any further away from Fall weather but no matter what the weather, it’s always a good time for cake.

 

 

Disclaimer: I was gifted packets of pistachios from Wonderful Pistachios. All thoughts, recipes and opinions are my own.

 

 

 

Mini Caramel Mudcake Cupcakes with Caramel Icing

What a day! You’d think the lead up to Mother’s Day would be pretty low key. No, not in this house. It started off with helping out in my daughter’s classroom, calling into the shops and electronic banking was down with my bank so a trip to the bank and a queue 20 deep. Then it was home to make some cupcakes for my daughter’s Girl Guides “Mother’s Day” afternoon tea and to attack the stench that was in my daughter’s room (refer previous post). Then it was back up to my daughter’s school church for a Mother’s Day Liturgy, a snake slithering past me while I waited to pick her up, ice the cupcakes, Guide’s afternoon tea and then a Mother’s Day craft evening at the local hardware store (Bunnings for the Aussies) and then home. Kids were asleep in about 5 minutes and I won’t be far behind them.

I don’t know why I went down the ‘caramel’ road. Maybe it had something to do with a friend of mine mentioning a caramel icing recipe she found. I get these thoughts in my mind and I can think of nothing else. (Don’t mention peanut butter to me. Oh damn it! Now I’ll have to have some.)

I found this recipe here for Caramel Mudcake Cupcakes and it was so damn easy. Just melt the butter, sugar, white chocolate etc etc. Mix into the flour and that was it.

The caramel icing was just as easy and the recipe is here. They went like ‘hotcakes’ at the Guide meeting and everyone raved about them. I think this might be a new favourite recipe and it is inevitable that it will no doubt be turned into a chocolate version (or peanut butter).

Caramel Mudcake Cupcakes with Caramel Frosting

3.5 oz (100g) white chocolate buttons
4.5 oz (125g) butter, chopped
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup golden syrup
2/3 cup milk
1 cup plain flour
1/3 cup self raising flour
1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat the oven to 170 deg C. Combine the chocolate, butter, sugar, syrup and milk in a saucepan. Stir over a low heat until melted and combined. Allow to cool for about 15 mins. Sift the flours. Mix flours into the caramel mixture. Stir in the egg. Bake for 30 mins.

Caramel Icing:
125g butter, chopped
1 cup (200g) firmly packed brown sugar
1/3 cup (80ml) milk
1½ cups (240g) icing sugar mixture

Melt butter in small saucepan. Stir in brown sugar and milk; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, 3 minutes, cool. Gradually stir in icing sugar until frosting is of spreadable consistency.

Note: I nearly always make mini sized cupcakes for kids as they usually only eat the icing and leave the cake.

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Red Velvet Cupcakes

 

So, what’s the big deal with Red Velvet Cake? Just about every American blog I’ve ever read all mentions Red Velvet Cake. My curiosity got the better of me and I decided to do this recipe from here which is Australian so has ingredients and measurements that we’re used to. I made Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting.

 

 

It was a lovely, light, moist cake but just basically a chocolate cake but coloured red. I’m not sure that my kids need any more artificial ingredients in their diet so I probably won’t make it again. The cream cheese icing was an unusal, but nice, topping. Something I usually only save for Carrot Cake.

Wikipedia says:

“James Beard‘s 1972 reference American Cookery[2] describes three red velvet cakes varying in the amounts of shortening and butter. All use red food coloring, but the reaction of acidic vinegar and buttermilk tends to better reveal the red anthocyanin in the cocoa. Before more alkaline “Dutch Processed” cocoa was widely available, the red color

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would have been more pronounced. This natural tinting may have been the source for the name “Red Velvet” as well as “Devil’s Food” and similar names for chocolate cakes.[3][1] While foods were rationed during World War II, bakers used boiled beets to enhance the color of their cakes. Boiled grated beets or beet baby food are found in some red velvet cake recipes, where they also serve to retain moisture.

In Canada the cake was a well-known dessert in the restaurants and bakeries of the Eaton’s department store chain in the 1940s and 1950s. Promoted as an exclusive Eaton’s recipe, with employees who knew the recipe sworn to silence, many mistakenly believed the cake to be the invention of the department store matriarch, Lady Eaton.[4]

A resurgence in the popularity of this cake is partly attributed to the 1989 film Steel Magnolias in which the groom’s cake (a southern tradition) is a red velvet cake made in the shape of an armadillo.[1]“