You Should Bake This...

...and then eat it. Post haste.

We make this a lot around here in the Fall-time because it is FABULOUS. It's from the November 2005 issue of Everyday Food which is a great little magazine if you love food and you eat it everyday and you can swing the subscription $.

Pumpkin Spice Cake (as seen here)

1/2 c. melted butter, plus a bit to grease the pan
2 1/2 c. regular flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. pumpkin pie spice (OR: 1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 3/4 tsp. ginger, 1/2 tsp. nutmeg, and
1/8 tsp EACH allspice and cloves)

2 eggs
1 1/2 c. sugar
1 can (15 oz) solid-pack pumpkin

1. Preheat the ol' bakeroo to 350. Grease a 9-inch pan.
2. Blend dry ingredients (flour, soda, salt, spices). In a bigger bowl, whisk the rest together (butter, eggs, pumpkin, sugar). Add dry ingredients to wet, mix gently until smooth.
3. Turn batter into prepared pan. Bake 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out with just a few crumbly crumbs on it. Cool the cake 10 minutes before turning out onto a rack to cool completely.
4. When the cake is cooled completely, you can serve it as-is or top it with some variety of cream cheese icing (just none of that store-bought crap - really, if you can bake a cake, you can make icing).

Okay, so I didn't copy the recipe word-for-word. I'm quite sure Martha would never allow the word 'crap' to be used in any of her recipes, nor would she EVER refer to an oven as an "ol' bakeroo" (how scandalous!).

Also, when I make it, I try to healthierlyify it a little bit by adjusting the following:

• instead of the 1/2 c. of melted butter, use 1/4 c. melted butter and 1/4 c. unsweetened applesauce (makes for a slightly moister cake too)
• use anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 c. less sugar
• use about a Tbsp less flour and throw in the equivalent of ground flax seed (this also gives it just a tinge of nutty flavour)
  
• if you want to get really crazy, you can also throw in a couple Tbsp of fibre powder or protein powder without causing any noticeable damage to the cake; just don't tell your Husband because he might not appreciate the healthalicious quality of his dessert being in any way tampered with.
  

I'd give you a recipe for the icing too but the one I used last time was one I found online and played around with a bit and of course, never wrote any notes about. Oh! you can also make this cake in a Bundt pan or a loaf pan (but you'll have to bake it 25-30 minutes longer in a loaf pan and cover it with foil if it starts to brown too quickly). If you bake it as a loaf, it would taste equally as good by the slice, spread with homemade applesauce....but then that just wouldn't be quite enough calories for a pumpkiny treat, now would it? You decide.