Surprise Pumpkin Cake
Autumn is officially here. Well, at least that is what it says on the calendar. Here in South Florida, I am very happily still enjoying 87° weather with lots of sunshine and a bit of rain.
Yet all over the blogosphere, I am seeing tempting pumpkin and apple recipes that remind me that perhaps elsewhere in the country there are people who actually live with Autumn weather.
I was not inclined to leave my summer berry recipes until I ran into my friend Judy who asked if I had any easy pumpkin recipes. My response, “I will soon!”
I had recently seen a recipe for a Butterscotch Cake and, initially, thought I would play with it and include pumpkin. The recipe called for butterscotch chips but I do not care for the ones sold in my grocery store.
I headed over to Whole Foods hoping they would have a more ‘natural’ butterscotch chip, if one actually exists. No such luck. I did, however, notice a bag of Sahale Snacks Nut Blend. There area several varieties but the Valdosta Pecan blend really caught my attention with roasted pecans, sweet cranberries, black pepper and orange zest.
Don’t get scared by the black pepper. It is not a dominant taste but does add a lovely pinch of spice to the backend of each bite, which is how I came up with the name Surprise Pumpkin Cake.
The cake itself is quite moist. The layer of nuts/dried fruit in the middle is not only lovely to see but, also, quite tasty.
The Sahale Snacks pecan blend does not have to be used in the recipe. Substituting roasted pecans with or without dried fruit is an alternative. The important thing is to keep the final weight the same, which in this case is 4 ounces.
Eventually, South Florida will get a bit cooler and I will be sad to say goodbye to summer. This may be when some of you are putting on your boots to trudge through a snowdrift or two. In the meantime now that I know Autumn recipes are in demand for friends all over the country, I will start making more. Nothing like a little nudge to get me going.
| Surprise Pumpkin Cake | Print |
- ¼ - ½ cup turbinado sugar
- 2½ cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 14 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
- 2 cups light brown sugar
- ½ cup sugar
- 4 eggs
- ½ cup heavy whipping cream
- 15 ounces pumpkin puree
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 4 ounces Sahale snacks – nut blend – Valdosta pecan, chopped
- For the cake:
- Preheat the oven to 325°. Grease a 14 cup bundt pan and sprinkle all over with turbinado sugar. Set aside.
- Whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.
- Cream the butter with both sugars for 3 minutes on medium high speed until light and fluffy, scraping down the bowl as needed. Add the eggs one at a time and mix until combined.
- Add in ½ of the dry ingredients followed by the cream, pumpkin puree and vanilla. Lastly, blend in the remaining dry ingredients.
- Transfer ½ of the batter to the prepared pan. Sprinkle the Sahale snack mix over the batter. Top with the remaining batter.
- Bake in a 325° oven for 50 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and cool on a rack for 15 minutes. Flip the pan out onto another cooling rack and cool.
- Betsy's tidbits:
- I loved using the Sahale nut blend. However, it can easily be substituted for 4 ounces of whatever roasted nut/dried fruit combination you prefer.
