The Great Pumpkin rises! *Halloween special*

Today’s Daily Prompt is “Trick or Trick”:
It’s Halloween, and you just ran out of candy. If the neighborhood kids (or anyone else, really) were to truly scare you, what trick would they have to subject you to?

Let me say something first: I don’t do Halloween. Never have. And probably never will. It’s not popular in Germany and it doesn’t help that I despise horror movies and get scared by pretty much anything!

Daily prompt answered, I can now focus on the less scary and most enjoyable part of Halloween:

Pumpkin carving and cooking with pumpkin 🙂

Up until yesterday I had never carved a pumpkin in my entire life. You can imagine my face when I lifted the top and peaked inside. ‘It looks strange’ I thought to myself. You should have seen my face whilst removing the pulp and stringy fibres. It was so slimy and yucky, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

Plump pumpkin!
A messy encounter…
But it’s finally done
Anyone knows the best way to roast them?

The pumpkin yielded an astonishing 1.5kg of flesh which I used to make a scrummy soup and a delicious cake. I’m writing about the pumpkin cake today (Chloe@Dash.Dot.Drizzle, this one’s for you!).

 

HALLOWEEN PUMPKIN CAKE

I used this recipe from good ol’ BBC Good Food but substituted and changed a few things. I had no light muscovado sugar, so used normal granulated sugar. 300g is way too much though, the cake is very sweet even though I only used 250g. Maybe it made a difference that it was a different sugar, but next time I’d go for 200g of light muscovado sugar. I also left out the sultanas because I’m not a fan.

I followed the instructions and the batter turned out tasting lovely and with the right texture. From that point unfortunately, I couldn’t stick to the recipe any longer because it would have resulted in a mess. The cooking time of 30min was way too short. After 1 hour at 160 degrees (fan oven) it was finally no longer liquid in the middle but still stodgy. So, back into the oven for another 20min. When it was finally done it smelled delicious, scents of spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger filling the kitchen.

Before
After
Finished cake
End result

While the cake was cooling I prepared the frosting. You don’t need it I guess, the cake in itself is rich and full of flavours, but I love a good cream cheese frosting! Shame that this one turned out very runny.. I even came prepared after reading the comments and tips on the recipe page, so I changed the quantity of butter and icing sugar, but it still wasn’t perfect. Don’t get me wrong, the frosting tastes absolutely delicious but you need to keep the cake in the fridge otherwise it’ll get runny. This was my first attempt at pumpkin cake and I’m surprised how much it reminds me of carrot cake! So if you’re a fan of this classic treat then you’ll love this one, too.

I’d rate this cake with 7/10 and would definitely make it again next year (albeit with a few minor changes to quantities)!

Oh, and this is our finished jack-o’-lantern:

IMG_2952

Have you cooked or baked with pumpkin and got any tasty recipes to share?

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Category : Daily Prompt, Food
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