INGREDIENTS
200 g Soft light brown sugar
125 g Unsalted butter See notes
212.5 g Pumpkin puree Half a tin. See notes
200 g Self raising flour
1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
3 Eggs Medium
2 tsp Ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp Ground nutmeg
Cream cheese icing (ingredients below)
INSTRUCTIONS
Preheat your oven to 180C.
Place a baking sheet or baking tray into the oven to warm while it is preheating.
In a large bowl, add your sugar and butter to a bowl and mix using an electric whisk until the mixture is combined and light and fluffy.
Put in your pumpkin, flour, bicarbonate of soda, eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg and lemon zest. Whisk until just combined.
Line a square tin (20cm x 20cm) with baking paper or baking parchment. Pour in your cake mixture and smooth out.
Bake for 30 minutes or until a sharp knife comes out clean.
NOTES
Topping: Follow this cream cheese frosting recipe here to top your cake. I then like to sprinkle a little ground cinnamon.
Pumpkin puree: Use half of a 425g tin and freeze the other half to avoid wastage. Simply spoon it into a freezer bag, remove the air out of it and freeze. Defrost thoroughly before you use it. Alternatively you could bake a double batch and freeze one cake.
Using fresh pumpkin: If you’d rather use fresh pumpkin, scoop out the flesh, cook it, puree it and weigh about 213g. You need to cook it for long enough for it to be very thick and not watery. Freeze any leftovers into portions so you can bake another day.
To cook evenly: Avoid an undercooked base by putting the tin you’re cooking on onto a PREHEATED baking sheet when it’s in the oven. (Put a baking sheet into the oven when you preheat it, then when your cake is prepared in the regular tin, sit it ON TOP of the extra baking sheet which is already hot.)
Butter: This should ideally be unsalted. Also, use your butter at room temperature, or if it has come straight from the fridge, microwave for a few seconds until slightly softened.
INGREDIENTS
100 g Unsalted butter See notes
100 g Icing sugar
200 g Full fat cream cheese See notes
1 tsp Vanilla extract See notes
INSTRUCTIONS
Put the butter and icing sugar in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer for 3-5 minutes until it is light and fluffy and has become paler in colour. (At this point it can look like the mixture has gone grainy, but keep the faith it will come together as you keep mixing).
Open your cream cheese, drain off any watery liquid floating on top, add the cream cheese to the bowl along with the vanilla extract.
Fold this in carefully, by hand using a wooden spoon ideally.
Mix just until there are no lumps of cream cheese left – if you over-mix your icing will become watery.
