Pumpkin Spice cake

With the festive season upon us, it does feel like winter is here and one tries to feel the nip in the air during the early morning walks; soon to realise that its more a childhood memory than the actual weather change in Mumbai. We used to call it winter then and just about then, mom would pull out our warm clothes from under the bed–new crochet caps matching with our dresses would magically appear in the mornings, sweaters would be pulled out, school sweaters would be lost, and then found and most of all we would just crave warm beverages all through the day!

Here is a recipe, which is definitely not from my childhood but reminiscent of that nip in the air we feel during the festivities of Dusshera.

Please read through the entire

Notes:

Pumpkin Puree: Roughly chop a large bowl of red pumpkin (also called disco pumpkin or Sambhar pumpkin in Mumbai) and microwave it for 5 mins with a little bit of water. Cool and make a puree. Keep one cup of this puree aside to be used in the recipe.

We use the red pumpkin as its sweeter than the yellower version.

Ingredients:

Pumpkin puree -1/2 cup
Eggs- 2
Vegetable oil- 2/3 cup
Cane sugar -2/3rd cup
Plain flour -1 and 1/3 cup
Baking soda- 1tsp
Baking Powder- 1tsp
Ground cinnamon – 1tsp
Pumpkin spice – 2tsp

Method:

In a mixing bowl, cream the egg, sugar and oil until the sugar is incorporated well into the liquid mix of eggs and oil. A hand mixer is preferable. If you do not have one, do use a wired egg whisk for the purpose.

Take all dry ingredients, namely flour, baking powder and soda and sieve it together 2-3 times. This ensures that the baking powder is mixed evenly in the flour and that the latter has no lumps. Keep aside. (If you do not have a sieve handy, just mix the dry flour mixture with a fork to ensure there are no lumps).

Add the dry mixture into the wet batter and mix just until the flour is incorporated. Do not over mix.

Preheat oven to 180 degree C. Grease a loaf tin and pour batter into pan.

Bake at 180 degrees for 45 mins or until a skewer inserted into the cake turns out clean. Be careful while doing it as the oven is super hot and hot steam will emerge when you open the oven door/lid.

Once done, remove cake from oven and let it cool for 10 mins. Remove cake to plate the dish.

Enjoy the lovely aroma of cinnamon wafting through your house and save a slice for yourself before it disappears into your little one’s tummy!