Help from other scratchers-pumpkin cake - Page 2

Here is another recipe. This one is for Pumpkin bars; however, I would image that it could be baked in a cake pan.

This recipe needs no tweeking, it has worked perfectly every time I have made it. Make sure your spices are fresh- it makes a difference.

Pumpkin Bars
This cake is good and moist; it is also very easy to whip together.
Bars:
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup currants or raisins ( I use golden raisins.)
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cloves
1 cup oil
16 oz. can pumpkin
4 eggs

Frosting:
2 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup margarine or butter, softened
3 oz pkg cream cheese, softened
1 Tablespoon. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. grated orange peel

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 15x10" jelly roll pan. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup; level off. In large bowl, blend all bar ingredients at low speed until moistened. Beat 2 minutes at medium speed. Pour into prepared pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely.
In small bowl, combine all frosting ingredients; beat until smooth. Spread over cooled bars. Refrigerate leftovers. 48 bars.

Do you think one of these recipes could be halved? I made the heavenly spice cake on here the other day (the doctored mix) and though it was great, I really wanted a good solid scratch recipe to try and just couldn't find one that sounded right to me. I still have some pumpkin, but only 8 oz. and I want to use it today if possible. I can just make 1 8" round.

Thank you! Yeah, as easy as doctored are, I've really been trying to find some good consistent scratch recipes. I'm just a hobbyist, but if I ever did decide to do something with after my girls are in school I wouldn't want that to be the time to try and learn new methods and recipes! Trust me, this will be going in the oven today! I just love, love pumpkin!

So Annie, it sounds like you talked yourself into your own cake!

Just cut the recipe amounts in half for the pumpkin bars and bake in 8 inch pan. It will more than likely be 1 1/2" high rather than the little over 1' so it might take a bit longer to bake- or maybe not. This would be a good choice for novice scratch baker. It is just measure, dump and mix. Nothing tricky about it.

Annie, if I really like a recipe, I've been known to bake four layers, but only for family.

Annie, you could try separating the eggs, mix everything else but the whites per the original directions, but whip the egg whites separately til semi stiff peaks, fold in one third of the whites at a time until all of the whites are incorporated.

That would help give you a little more rise on your layers.


Pumpkin and carrot type cakes will not rise quite as much as say our chocolate or white cakes, but I've found the above method helps quite a bit.

Good luck!

Well, I have something to contribute now that the cake is out of the oven. I unfortunately didn't quite have all the ingredients for every recipe, but they were all fairly similar, so I got a little creative. I don't know a tremendous amount about scratch baking, but I felt like being adventurous.

Here's the recipe I used:

1-1/2 c flour
1-1/2 c sugar (though I wish I had doing half regular and half light brown sugar- I forgot to)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg premixed)
2 eggs
1/2 c canola oil
8 oz pumpkin
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 c Woodchuck's Hard Apple Cider, Limited Edition Fall Flavor

I sifted all the dry ingredients together, beat the liquid together, then added the dry about 1 cup at a time until incorporated, then beat the whole thing for right at 2 minutes. Baked at 325 for about 35 minutes.

Like Annie, it didn't rise a whole lot. It was right at the top of my 2" pan all the way around, but the center sunk just a little. It has a great flavor, not overly sweet at all, and definitely not overwhelmingly pumpkin. It is good by itself, has a good texture, but kind of a large crumb. It's very, very moist and kind of dense.

I'm not really sure the cider made a huge difference. I love this apple cider, it is by far one of my favorite drinks to just sip on, but the Granny Smith version is very tart. The fall edition is an amber cider with a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg. I would imagine it gave it just a little more punch than using water.

The recipe above made just 1 8x2 cake, enough for me to test. I may throw some cream cheese icing on it later just to test it out, but I prefer to just eat straight cake these days! I may have to experiment a little more, but i'm happy!

I made these (cupcakes) this morning. The only change I made was using 2 tsp of pumpkin spice (which is basically the same as the cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice). I might increase it slightly next time, maybe not. I also added 1/2 tsp ground cloves.

I used water for the liquid, but I would definitely like to try it with the other options. Water was the only thing I had on hand without running back out to the store.

Very tasty. I tried one without the icing to make sure I didn't totally bomb the recipe, and it's delicious by itself. My boyfriend's cousin and her boyfriend tried one (after having been iced) and they liked it.

I have not read all the responses to it, but here is my take on this recipe.

The oil and the pumpkin are too much liquid fat. Try converting it to using butter. And try using the creaming method instead. I don't like this method at all for a cake. That is more of a quick bread, muffin method. Also it is way overleavened. I would suggesting cutting it down to about 1.5 tsps of each, given the amount of flour. The amount in this recipe is enough for 8 cups of flour. Sometimes there is that much baking soda to neutralize some kind of acidity. But 2 tsps is more than enough for the brown sugar and cake flour. Maybe pumpkin has some acidity to it that I am not aware of. I don't know. But I do know that much pumpkin and oil is way to dense and moist to hold up other than being flat.

Where did you get the recipe? Sometimes recipes are posted by someone who had good luck once, or did not know any better about what kind of cake to expect.