Mr O and I are big Halloween fans. We love all the silly traditions from pumpkin carving, to getting into fancy dress to preparing for trick or treaters. This year Little O was old enough to help out with the carving and he is old enough to go trick or treating with the neighbourhood children.
After seeing a friend of mine’s post, I decide to get in on using the leftover pumpkin to bake a cake so I thought I’d share the recipe for anyone else who might be considering doing some carving over the next couple of days. This cake is super easy to make and reminiscent of a carrot cake. Little O loved helping out with the baking although he declared the cake “yucky”, like almost everything we offer him to eat.
Leftover Halloween pumpkin cake
For the cake
300g self raising flour
300g light brown sugar
3 teaspoons of mixed spice
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
175g sultanas
Pinch of salt
4 eggs
200g melted butter
Zest of one orange
A couple of good squeezes of juice from half the aforementioned orange
500g grated pumpkin flesh
For the topping
Remaining juice of the orange half used for the cake
For the icing
200g cream cheese
85g very soft butter
100g icing sugar, sifted
Juice of half an orange
Zest of one orange
Preheat your over to 180 C and grease and line a 20cm x 20cm square baking or roasting tin. I used my brownie tin.
In a large bowl mix together the flour, sugar, mixed spice, bicarbonate of soda, sultanas and salt.
In a separate bowl beat together the eggs, butter and orange juice. Stir the egg mixture into the flour mixture and then stir in the grated pumpkin. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes or until cooked through when is skewer is inserted into the centre.
Poke the cake over all over with a skewer while still warm and then squeeze over the remaining juice from the half an orange you used for the cake. Once the juice has sunk in, remove the cake from the tin and allow to cool completely.
While the cake is cooling, make the icing. Beat together the cream cheese, butter, icing sugar and orange juice until smooth and then put in the fridge.
Once the cake is completely cool, spread over the topping, sprinkle with orange zest and serve.
Serves 16
As this cake is topped with cream cheese icing it needs to be stored in the fridge.
I’m a Halloween Grump, so we won’t have a pumpkin to make a cake out of. 🙂
But I would happily eat your one, Abbi. Yum!
Best wishes, Pete.
It was a really nice cake – reminiscent of a carrot cake.
Sounds wonderful.
It was really tasty.
Ooh what a great idea. Thanks for sharing this. 🙂
I hate wasting food so it was great to make use of the pumpkin for more than decoration.