Saturday, November 28, 2009

Patty Cake, Patty Cake, Baker's Man...........

Some time ago,I read about an easy cake recipe on someone's blog. All you had to do, she said, was mix a chocolate cake mix with a sixteen ounce can of pumpkin. Pumpkin is an acquired taste, in my opinion. One that I never acquired. Give me pecan or give me death! Nevertheless, I made a mental note to try it....sometime....then promptly forgot about it.

Since the GOCSD [Great OC Slim Down] began earlier this week, I'm not trying to make cake or brownies or anything that will make him veer off course. But tonight I had to make an exception.

Tonight the Bean's GF was coming over. She turned twenty one today. He had planned a fancy dinner for her, but cake had not entered his head. To me, cake and birthdays go hand in hand, so, with the sand in the hourglass relentlessly falling, grain by grain, I cast about for a cake to make that would be both fast and wonderful. And then I remembered the magic pumpkin cake. No eggs, no oil, no butter; nothing but a chocolate cake mix and a can of pumpkin. The blogger who wrote about it claimed it was so good she could have eaten the whole thing.....Hmmmmm....we would see!

It felt pretty chalky mixing it together, but eventually all the dry mix was moistened by the pumpkin. It didn't seem right to put no eggs in, but no eggs were called for so I put no eggs in. Into the pan it went and then to the oven.

Half an hour later we had a cake for the birthday girl, which was the object of the exercise. It looked like a cake. It tasted chocolatey. It was edible. Mercifully, you could not taste the pumpkin. Served with a large helping of vanilla ice cream, and blackberry sauce, it filled the bill..... But I wouldn't be tempted to eat the whole thing. There'll be no encores. It was an interesting experiment.......but, next time I'll stick to the tried and trues!

5 comments:

SmitoniusAndSonata said...

How brave !! Sweet pumpkin anything seems so wrong , somehow .
Be careful though . The young lady will now produce this cake every time you call , thinking this is your all-time-favourite .

riseoutofme said...

Managed to drag yourself away from the darker side of Sweden then?

Pauline said...

how did you come to have a can pf pumpkin in the house?

persiflage said...

Good grief! Does pumpkin come in cans? What a relief that it was edible.
Our family just loves the buttermilk spice cake, but you do need the buttermilk.
How is the reading going?

Unknown said...

That's quite brave!!! To stir pumpkin into a cakemix and have a go at it. I'm glad it wasn't postively horrible!
So people from the great UK don't grow up eating pumpkin?
I never thought of it as an acquired taste. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies with cream cheese icing, oooh pumpkin scones from Starbucks!.... pumpkin sheetcake - more cream cheese icing.. now i've got myself dreaming of pumpkin, i love pumpkin bread.. i think i'll make some today!! Thanks for the inspiration!
:waves madly