Pumpkin Cookies No More...

In this, my third post about pumpkin recipes, I give you my new pumpkin cake recipe. It is oddly familiar, perhaps, to anyone who has read previous pumpkin-related posts. Familiar indeed - more like exactly the same as the pumpkin cookie recipe of my first pumpkin post.

I mentioned in that post that I'm not all that big a fan of cake cookies. And so, I thought, why not make that recipe into a cake? (I did.) Cool, but I needed a frosting of some sort. And there's no way I'd ever be able to eat any of the normal "cake frosting" recipes - way too much fat! [Sad but true - once upon a time I was such a huge fan of cake frosting from the grocery store...]

And I found myself an answer - in a vanilla glaze included in a pumpkin bread recipe I found that doesn't quite fit my diet at the moment.

In the spirit of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown - Happiness is pumpkin cake with icing! [True, these aren't actually lyrics from the song, but really, they should be. We could take out change out Snoopy's "pizza with sausage" in favor of Linus singing "pumpkin cake with icing" and put Snoopy on the third line instead with something like "every meal time" - it'd be fabulous! And yes, since you ask, I was in this musical, I played Linus - and hence the reason I know the lyrics and the order of them still...]

Anyway, back to:

Pumpkin Cake



1 cup pumpkin puree (fresh)
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup applesauce
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

1. Mix together pumpkin, sugar & applesauce.
2. In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients. Add to pumpkin mixture and mix well.
3. Spread into cake pan (I used a 9x12 pan, so my cake's pretty thin - if you use a smaller pan and make thicker cake, adjust baking times accordingly).
4. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick comes out of center clean.

While cooling the cake, make the icing!

Vanilla Icing
(For my cake, I needed this amount - but it's double the recipe I found online, so if your cake is smaller, I'd half my version.)

1 1/3 cups powdered sugar
2 Tbsp warm water
1/2 tsp vanilla

Thoroughly mix ingredients in a small mixing bowl. [Yay for whisks, and getting to lick the extra icing off that whisk after mixing, that's all I gotta say...]

Once the cake is completely cooled, spread icing over the cake. Cover and refrigerate until it's time to eat it!