Pumpkin Cake Traybake | Autumn Baking

This autumn, I wanted to try baking with pumpkin. So, after a bit of browsing and test baking, here is my recipe for a spicy pumpkin cake traybake!

Over the last few years, I have seen so many American baking recipes that use pumpkin. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin cake, pumpkin muffins, even pumpkin ice cream! So, I decided I had to find out for myself what was so special about this “unusual” ingredient!

How can you make a pumpkin cake in the UK?

Pumpkin purée from a tin is not a common thing in the UK. In fact, I wasn´t able to find it in any of the large supermarkets.
But that didn´t stop me, and I decided to just make my own. To do so, I had to chop and roast the flesh of a pumpkin, then remove it from its skin and finally purée it in a food processor. It was a lot of work, I will be honest, but very much worth it in the end! The puréed pumpkin gives the cake an amazing flavour and moist texture! You can make the purée in advance and simply keep it in an airtight container in the fridge for a few days (or the freezer if you want to keep it for longer).

Don´t waste any of the pumpkin and make this pumpkin “gut” loaf cake!

When preparing the pumpkin for the purée, I didn´t want to waste all the stringy insides of the pumpkin, the pumpkin “guts”, so to speak. Hence why I invented this pumpkin spice loaf cake, which uses up the pumpkin guts. The quantities of the dry ingredients were roughly based on my Swedish banana loaf cake, another recipe I would highly recommend you try!

The cake part of the pumpkin cake traybake recipe is based on a recipe by Sally´s Baking Addiction. I did, however, make a few tweaks and have also included the spices you will need to make the pumpkin spice mix, which isn´t available to buy as such in the UK.
For the frosting, I decided to use my own tried-and-tested cream cheese frosting which I also use for my carrot cake traybake. It tastes so good, I just can´t get enough of it!!!

To decorate my pumpkin cake traybake, I used some pecan nut halves. I think adding some chopped pecans to the mixture would also be a great addition to this pumpkin cake traybake, so why not give that a try?

Turn it into a Halloween Bake!

It´s October, so if you wanted to, you could make this cake for Halloween and colour the cream cheese frosting to make some spooky decorations. If you want to turn it into a Halloween bake, however, I would recommend trying these round spiderweb cakes and use water icing to decorate instead! It is a lot easier to colour and pipe decorations with! Feathered icing is so easy to do, so why not give it a try?!

Pumpkin Cake Traybake

Recipe

Ingredients:

FOR THE CAKE:

• 250g plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp each of ground nutmeg, ground cloves, allspice, ground ginger
• 240ml vegetable oil
• 4 large eggs
• 200g light or dark brown sugar (I used 100g of each)
• 100g caster sugar
• 425g (1 can) pumpkin puree (from ½ large pumpkin ~600g)
• 1 ½  tsp vanilla extract

FOR THE CREAM CHEESE FROSTING:

• 175g soft cheese
• 50g butter, very soft
• 100g icing sugar, sifted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• pecan nuts, to decorate

YOU WILL ALSO NEED:

• A 34x20cm brownie traybake tin, I´d recommend something like this one.

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Method:

1. Start by making the pumpkin purée. Preheat the oven to 200°C.
   With a large knife, carefully quarter the pumpkin. Place the pumpkin quarters cut-side-down on a baking tray lined with baking parchment. Bake in the preheated oven for 45-60 minutes until the flesh is soft and starts coming away from the skin. You might want to turn the pumpkin half-way through.
   Leave the roasted pumpkin to cool slightly, before separating the flesh from the skin (you should be able to peel it off easily). Then put the flesh into the bowl of a food processor and blend until smooth (or purée it with a stick blender).
   Any leftover pumpkin purée can be stored in the fridge and used in a different baking recipe or to make soup.
2. For the cake, preheat the oven to 180°C. Lightly grease and line the baking tin with baking paper.
3. Start by adding all the dry ingredients (except the different sugars) to a large mixing and stir them together.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, vegetable oil, brown sugar, caster sugar, pumpkin purée, and vanilla extract until well combined.
5. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix well to form a smooth, thick batter.
6. Transfer the batter into your prepared baking tins.
7. Bake the pumpkin cake in the preheated oven for 30-40 minutes, until it is starting to shrink away from the edges and an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
8. Leave the finished cake to cool in the tin for a few minutes before carefully transferring it to a wire rack. Leave to cool completely.
9. To make the cream cheese frosting, place all of the ingredients into a mixing bowl (make sure the butter is very soft and there are no lumps in the icing sugar!). Beat well with a wooden spoon or electric mixer until smooth.
10. Evenly spread the frosting over the cooled traybake. Cut into 18 equal squares and decorate each one with a pecan half.