Seasonal local food recipe No.166: Halloween pumpkin cake
If, like me, you’re fond of carrot cake, you’ll enjoy this. It’s another way of using up the flesh from the Hallowe’en pumpkin in Camel CSA’s weekly veg boxes.
This is adapted from the recipe in BBC GoodFood (which adds a rich frosting). There are quite a few different versions. Tess, one of our CSA members, includes pine nuts in hers (a delicious addition) and finishes with a swirl of glace icing.
Serves: 15 portions
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 30 mins
Ingredients
For the cake
300g self-raising flour
300g light muscovado sugar
3 tsp mixed spice
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
175g sultanas
½ tsp salt
4 eggs, beaten
200g butter, melted
zest 1 orange
1 tbsp orange juice
500g (peeled weight) pumpkin or butternut squash flesh, grated
For the drizzle
100g icing sugar , sifted
zest 1 orange and juice of half
Method
Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Butter and line a 30 x 20cm baking or small roasting tin with baking parchment.
Put the flour, sugar, spice, bicarbonate of soda, sultanas and salt into a large bowl and stir to combine. Beat the eggs into the melted butter, stir in the orange zest and juice, then mix with the dry ingredients till combined. Stir in the pumpkin. Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 30 mins, or until golden and springy to the touch.
Mix together the icing sugar, orange zest and juice. When the cake is done, cool for 5 mins then turn it onto a cooling rack. Prick it all over with a skewer and drizzle with the icing mixture while still warm. Leave to cool completely.
BBC GoodFood says: “Pumpkins can vary dramatically in water content, so keep an eye on the cake towards the end of cooking – yours may take less or more time to cook through. If you’re not carving out a pumpkin this year butternut squash works brilliantly, too.”
