Candace in the Kitchen

Archive for October, 2009

A couple of weeks ago I made the first pumpkin roll of the season. I brought it to work and put it in the kitchen. I’m pretty sure it was gone in about 15 minutes. It’s that good. I will change out the craptastic photo above with a better one the next time I make it.

Ingredients:

Cake:

1/4 cup powdered sugar (to sprinkle on towel)

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 large eggs

1 cup granulated sugar

2/3 cup pumpkin puree

Filling:

1 pkg. (8 oz.) cream cheese, at room temperature

1 cup powdered sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Powdered sugar (optional for decoration)

Directions:

PREHEAT oven to 375° F. Grease 15 x 10-inch jelly-roll pan; line with wax paper. Grease and flour paper. Sprinkle a thin, cotton kitchen towel with powdered sugar.

COMBINE flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt in small bowl. Beat eggs and granulated sugar in large mixer bowl until thick. Beat in pumpkin. Stir in flour mixture. Spread evenly into prepared pan. Sprinkle with nuts.

BAKE for 13 to 15 minutes or until top of cake springs back when touched. (If using a dark-colored pan, begin checking for doneness at 11 minutes.) Immediately loosen and turn cake onto prepared towel. Carefully peel off paper. Roll up cake and towel together, starting with narrow end. Cool on wire rack.

FOR FILLING:
BEAT cream cheese, 1 cup powdered sugar, butter and vanilla extract in small mixer bowl until smooth. Carefully unroll cake. Spread cream cheese mixture over cake. Reroll cake. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least one hour. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving, if desired.

Hints: Make sure that you cool the cake completely before unrolling and putting the filling inside. If it’s still warm the cake will crack.

Source Rachael Ray

These were so delicious and couldn’t be easier!

I am writing the directions the way the website should have. I hate recipes that include the ingredients for all components of the dish lumped together. Because of the way that they were written I used the entire 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla in the batter for the cakes and another 1/2 in the filling instead of 1 t in the cakes and 1/2 t in the filling. It wasn’t an issue and they tasted great, I just didnt realize what I had done until I went to make the filling.

I doubled the filling to make sure that I had enough and I had a little left over.

Ingredients:

Cakes:

1 stick unsalted butter, melted

1 c packed light brown sugar

2 large eggs, room temp, lightly beaten

1 c canned pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling!)

1 T pumpkin pie spice

1 t vanilla extract

1 t baking powder

1 t baking soda

3/4 t salt

1 2/3 c all purpose flour

Filling:

1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened

4 oz cream cheese, softened

1/2 t vanilla extract

1 c confectioners sugar

Directions:

Cakes:

Preheat oven to 350°

In a large bowl, whisk together the melted butter and brown sugar until smooth. Whisk in the eggs, pumpkin puree, pumpkin pie spice, 1 teaspoon vanilla, the baking powder, the baking soda and 3/4 teaspoon salt. Using a rubber spatula, fold in the flour.

sing an ice cream scoop or tablespoon, drop 12 generous mounds of batter, spaced evenly, onto each baking sheet. Bake until springy to the touch, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool completely.

(I used a cookie scoop and ended up with about 12 finished pies, double what the recipe yield is supposed to be)

Filling:

Cream the softened butter with the cream cheese. Add the confectioners’ sugar and the remaining 2 pinches salt and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla; mix on low speed until blended, then beat on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes.

Assembly:

You can either spread one cake with filling and top with another or pipe the filling onto one side and then top with another. Piping isn’t necescary at all, I just like doing it and I like how the finished product looks. If you are going to pipe I do suggest making the extra frosting because you generally use more when piping than just spreading it on.

These were favors for a baby shower.

Vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream and one large dot sprinkle to match the theme.

Box decorations were just blue green ribbon secured by a sticker made of Cricut cutouts and run through a Xyron sticker maker.

This cake was for a baby shower and is supposed to look like the napkin below.

Not too bad but it could definitely use some work (like slightly bigger polka dots). Like with the Farm cake I learned that there are some colors of fondant that you should just buy. Brown is one of them. That sweater was such a pain. After adding so much coloring it was like trying to roll and cut slime.

I also think that the hands look super weird, but hey, they’re odd on the napkin too.

Cake was vanilla with vanilla buttercream. I used the Wilton Color Mist  for the pink and purple. That stuff is great because it’s easy and you don’t have to dye different batches of icing but it sucks because underneath that thin layer of color it’s white, and if you bump it there will be a white spot so you can’t just smooth it out. In the future I may just suck it up and color the frosting.