Pumpkin Swirl Cake Decadence

Do you ever see a new recipe that you just know you have to try, as soon as possible? I do more often than you might think. A short while ago I saw this recipe from King Arthur Baking and knew that I had to make it soon, while pumpkin season is here. 

This is a lovely, moist, fragrant marble cake. The original recipe was for a cake made in a loaf pan, even a decorative loaf pan with pumpkins design on top. I needed a sheet cake for a luncheon I was going to, so I tripled the recipe and made it in two 9x13-inch pans. Then I truly made it decadent by topping the cakes with Lori's Cream Cheese Icing, which is the best cream cheese frosting you ever had.

The cake is a vanilla cake, but partway through the making of the batter, you divide the batter into two, then add pumpkin and pumpkin spice to one half and sour cream to the other half. Batter is dolloped into the pans alternately, then you swirl it with a skewer or chopstick. That way each piece has some dreamy vanilla-sour cream cake and some fragrant pumpkin cake. It is impressive looking and made quite a hit with the women who were at the luncheon. Of course I decorated the cakes with seasonal sprinkles and candy corn, but you can use whatever decorations you like.

If you'd like the recipe for just the loaf pan size cake, you can find it HERE on the King Arthur Baking site. The recipe below is for two 9x13-inch cakes plus enough Cream Cheese Icing to frost each of those cakes, plus a bit more for decoration if you like...or for putting between pumpkin cookies or between graham crackers...you get the idea!

Pumpkin Swirl Cake
Makes two 9x13-inch cakes
Recipe from King Arthur Baking

6 eggs
3 cups sugar
2 1/4 cups vegetable oil
3 tablespoons vanilla
6 teaspoons baking powder
2 1/4 teaspoons salt
6 cups cake flour
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
6 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice (See Note at bottom)
1 1/2 cups sour cream

Grease and flour two 9x13-inch baking pans...with at least 2-inch sides. Set aside

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Beat eggs and sugar until smooth. Add oil gradually, beating continuously. Stir in the vanilla, baking powder and salt. Gently mix in the flour, scraping sides and beaters as needed, until completely mixed. Batter will be stiff.

Transfer half of the batter  to another bowl...about 3 cups...and mix in the pumpkin puree and the pumpkin spice. Set aside.

To the vanilla batter, add the sour cream and beat to incorporate. Scrape down sides and beaters if needed and mix a bit more.

In the prepared pans, dollop about 1/4 cup one batter, then 1/4 cup the other batter and continue doing that to create a checkerboard effect in the pan. Repeat with the other pan. Once all of the batter is in the pans, use a skewer or chopstick to swirl figure eights across the checkerboard pattern. Only a few are needed...resist doing too many or you will lose the separation of the batters that makes the cake so lovely.

Bake for 20-30 minutes, until cake springs back when center is pushed gently. Tester inserted will come out clean. Cool on wire racks 5 minutes, then turn out of the pans, or, if preferred, leave in the pan and serve from the pan once frosted and decorated.

Note: No pumpkin pie spice? Make your own:
5 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg 

Let cool completely before icing. Use your favorite buttercream or the following Cream Cheese Icing.

Lori's Cream Cheese Icing
Makes enough for two 9x13-inch cakes, plus extra for decoration or another use

2 sticks butter, softened
24 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
4-6 cups powdered sugar

Cream butter, cream cheese, sour cream and vanilla together until fluffy. Gradually mix in powder sugar. Towards the end, add 1/4 cup at a time until you reach you desired texture and taste.

Goes With Hummingbird - Pineapple? Banana? Pecans? Cinnamon?

The Cake Slice Bakers are posting this weekend and the June Cake choices included a lovely blueberry coffee cake, a decadent caramel layer cake, a pretty pink lemonade cake, and my choice, the Celebration Hummingbird Cake. I've never made a Hummingbird Cake before. No one seems to know the origin of the name, but it has been a highly requested recipe from Southern Living Magazine for over 30 years. The recipe itself comes from the Southern Living Cake Book and to make it very celebratory they used Browned Butter Frosting and a Cream Cheese Custard filling, plus piping the icing in a basket weave for the cookbook photo. Not being in a crafty mood, I simplified my version.

The hummingbird cake is very moist because it has crushed pineapple and ripe bananas, along with the usual cake ingredients. It has just a touch of cinnamon and some crunch from toasted pecans. I only made one change to the cake part by substituting a stick of melted, browned butter for 1/2 cup of the oil. For the icing and filling of this delicious, decadent layer cake, I substituted my favorite cream cheese frosting. It has the cream cheese of the called for in the filling and I already used browned butter in the cake, so it's OK it's not in the frosting. The recipe for this wonderful cream cheese frosting is from a good friend and it is over 30 years old, too, so the timing is right. It is softer than the browned butter icing, has a small amount of sour cream which goes a long way to softening the super sweet effect you often get with confectioner's sugar icings. Pretty easy to work with, too.

My smart daughter was here helping with the cake creation and she suggested sprinkling some rum over the cake layers right before icing them to carry out the Caribbean vibe. It was brilliant! you caught just a hint of rum in most bites and a big hit of banana and pineapple. The pecans not only add crunch, but hey looked pretty on the top as decoration. Even though I put waxed paper strips under the edges to keep the icing off the plate edge, it was so delightfully gooey that the icing left tracks where the paper had been as I pulled the paper out. Lori's Cream Cheese Icing the kind of icing that you could just stand over the bowl and eat it with a spoon. Too rich to do it for long though.

I suspect I will be asked to make this one again. We had some friends over and I never did get a morning light photo...the cake was totally gone before I could get a shot. The photos I did get were with night time light. Don't worry too much about how it looks...just make this cake! You'll be glad you did.

Be sure to visit the other Cake Slice Bakers posts to see which of the month's choices they made.

An InLinkz Link-up

Sweet Way with a Veggie

Sweetie loves carrot cake. We don't have it very often, probably in part because I prefer chocolate cake, but we will be having some tonight. He was such a trooper, practically perfect in fact, during the ups and downs of my recent illness, that he deserves a treat. This one even comes with some veggies and nuts, so it isn't too wicked...unless you add the addictive cream cheese frosting. I also made a mini, pictured here, as a birthday cake for a friend. Even birthdays you don't want to celebrate deserve cake.

This one is the one I found in Dorie Greenspan's modern classic book Baking, From my home to yours. I followed it nearly to the letter, the only changes being that I used 1/2 cup less sugar than the recipe calls for and I decreased the oil by 1/4 cup and replaced that with soft unsalted butter. The oily taste has always been one of the things I don't enjoy with traditional carrot cake, so a little butter helps. It also makes the cake a touch lighter in texture. This one doesn't have any pineapple in it, nor raisins, nor cranberries, just carrots, coconut and pecans. I did add a teaspoon of vanilla, too, again to mask some of the oily flavor.

It makes a gigantic three layer cake, or, as I did, two small mini cakes and one thick layer. It is firm enough to cut the layers in half so you can put icing between the halves and on top. I used my friend Lori's thirty year old cream cheese frosting which has a touch of sour cream in it for a nice zing. It goes really well with carrot cake (and is great with Red Velvet Cake if you are planning to make that for Valentine's Day...never too soon to plan sweet surprises!) and there is plenty. The icing, by some magic alchemy, really brings out the flavors of the carrots and the cinnamon. Well worth the calories.

On the health front, seeing doc tomorrow, which should be the end of it. Still tire easily and I take naps, which is very unusual for me, but feel blessed that all is well again in general.

Mostly Dorie Carrot Cake with Lori's Cream Cheese Icing

2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 cups grated carrots (about 9-10 carrots)(this is a good place to use organic carrots, if available)
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup shredded coconut
3/4 cup canola or safflower oil
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) softened butter
4 large eggs at room temperature

Butter and flour 3 9-inch cake pans or equivalent. Place oven racks to divide oven into thirds. Put cake pans on baking sheets, two to one sheet, one on another sheet. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

In one bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.
In another bowl combine the grated carrots, chopped pecans and shredded coconut.

In the bowl of a stand mixer beat the oil and butter together, then add the sugar and beat on medium speed until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating until smooth after each. Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture, mixing only until barely combined. Gently mix in the carrot mixture. Divide the batter into the prepared pans.

Bake in the preheated oven for 40 - 50 minutes, rotating the pans top to bottom and front to back halfway through baking. When done, a thin knife inserted in the center will come out clean.

Place cakes on a cooling rack and cool 5 minutes. Run a knife around the sides of the pans and unmold them. Invert so tops of cakes are right side up and cool on cooling rack.

Make the Cream Cheese Icing (recipe below). Place 1/3 of the icing between each layer and the final third on the top, swirling the icing so its thick by the edges of the cake (which means you will be able to see some of the icing between the layers). Refrigerate the cake for 30 minutes to set the frosting. Serve chilled or at room temperature.
Serves 8 - 10.

For mini cakes, I baked some of the batter in a small 5" (I think, but could have been 4 or 4 1/2 inch) springform pan. Once the cake was cool, I split it horizontally. The bottom layer went on the plate, then some icing, which I swirled out to the edges, then the top layer and more icing on top. Since it was for a birthday, I added some heart shaped decor candies, silver balls and a candle. Party!

Lori's Cream Cheese Icing
½ cup (1 stick) butter, softened

12 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
¼ cup sour cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2-3 cups powdered sugar

Cream butter, cream cheese, sour cream and vanilla together until fluffy. Then mix in gradually
the powdered sugar. Start with 2 cups and add to desired texture and taste by ¼ cup at a time.

Spread between layers, and on top of cake.