Lekker: Maple Bourbon Pumpkin Cake

My last blog post was about the amazingly simple Salted Butter Apple Galette, which I love as an alternative to pie because I hate pie. SUE ME. In that pies are traditional for Thanksgiving dessert and my hatred of them does not take holidays, I opted to make this Maple Bourbon Pumpkin Cake.

I chose this because

1. bourbon and
2. because I didn't want a painfully sweet saccharine dessert.

This cake strikes the perfect balance between sweet (the glaze and the maple candied pecans) and boozy-spiced-fall-ness, and was a hit at my table. Try with vanilla ice cream.

I like to envision this method of decorating as all the pecans coming to worship at the pecan Altar of Candied Wonder in the middle.

It doesn't really matter which bourbon you decide to use. Maker's Mark is my do-or-die favourite, but I am poor now and cannot afford that so I was good ol' Jack for me. Most of it bakes off though, so honestly it doesn't make any difference.

So, let's get baking!

MAPLE BOURBON PUMPKIN CAKE
serves 8

WHAT YOU NEED

For the cake:

• 2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 T baking powder
• 1 t pumpkin pie spice
• 3/4 t salt
• 1 1/2 cups firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 1/3 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 eggs
• 1 t vanilla extract
• 1 cup cooked pumpkin (Use the tinned stuff like I did, since I had leftovers from making one of my all-time favourites: Pumpkin Soup.)
• 3/4 cup whole milk
• 1/3 cup bourbon of your choice

For the glaze:

• 2 cups confectioner's sugar, sifted after measuring
• 2 T half-and-half
• 1 T melted unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 T bourbon
• 1 t vanilla extract

For the maple glazed pecans:
Shocking that you would need pecans and maple syrup, right?

• 1/2 cup pecan halves
• 2 T pure maple syrup
• 1/2 t cinnamon

WHAT YOU DO

1.  First things first, in a small bowl mix together the pecans, maple syrup, and cinnamon really well. These babies are gonna soak in that goodness while you're mixing up the cake. Give it a stir every once in awhile to make sure the syrup gets into allllll the nooks & crannies.

2. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and grease two 8-inch round cake pans. (I suppose this cake could also be done in a Bundt pan or some other loaf pan, or as cupcakes, but I don't know the cooking times and what have you for that.)

In a medium sized mixing bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, and salt. Whisk it well, since I'm saving you the hassle of actually sifting that flour separately to aerate it!

3. In another larger mixing bowl, beat the butter with an electric mixer until light yellow and fluffy. Add the brown sugar, and beat again until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and mix well. See: light and fluffy. (Get the picture?) Then add your pumpkin and vanilla. It might look a little grainy and weird after you add the pumpkin, but don't try to overbeat it just to get rid of that. It's fine.

4. With your mixer on low, add half the flour mixture to the wet batter. Mix well. Add the milk, and mix well. Add the other half of the flour, and ___ ____. Finally, dump in the bourbon and mix well-ish.

5. Pour the batter evenly into your pans, and bake at 350 for about 20-ish minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove the pans and set on top of wire cooling racks for about 10 minutes (this gives the cake time to contract from the sides of the pan) and then flip out onto the racks to finish cooling.

6. *While* those babies are cooling, and your oven is still at 350, it's time to do the pecans! Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and dump your maple coated pecans on there. Bake for 5 minutes, then remove and toss, and bake for 5 minutes more. That's all it should take for them to go all nicely dark brown and smell amazing. Feel free to taste test one.

7. Since that only took 10 minutes and your cakes are probably still cooling, you can mix up your glaze now and give it time to set up.

Tangent: I have a love-hate relationship with glazes. They are easy because they literally involve just dumping everything together and stirring until smooth (so...do that), BUT. Since glazes have a more liquid consistency than frosting, you kind of just dribble it down over the top of the cake and hope that it will come dripping down the sides attractively. But if you want those attractive little drips, then you can't pour too much glaze on...WHICH MEANS THERE ISN'T ENOUGH GLAZEY GOODNESS ON THE DAMN CAKE! And I won't stand for that.

So what you should do is schmear a decent amount on the inside of your two 8-inch layers as a filling, and *then* content yourself with dribbling the glaze over the top. If you want to put something else or nothing at all in the middle, then here's what I suggest: do one layer of slow glaze dribbling. Stop. Leave it alone for about 15 minutes, giving it time to set up. Then come back and do a second layer. It still won't give you a ton of glaze on the sides, but there's more on the top and whatever, I suppose that works.

8. I honestly don't even remember where we were now. Oh right, okay so you made the glaze. Once the cakes are cool, stack them on a cake plate and glaze accordingly as discussed/ranted about above. Decorate with the pecans as you wish. Done!

It would have been nice if I had remembered to take a photo of the *inside* once we had cut a slice, but no. Of course not. FOR THE RECORD, though, it's a lovely dusty dark orange.

Recipe originally inspired by this one by Bakerella.

Lekker: Pumpkin Soup

You know what success tastes like? THIS SOUP. No, really. I am so thrilled to have finally mastered a recipe for pumpkin soup I could SING! 1, because I refuse to be defeated with crappy recipes when I have my mind set on something and 2, because I am so. sick. of pumpkin by now. Trust me, I've gone through about 3-4 different recipes in my pursuit of perfection and since I was raised with a "third world country" mentality I can't justify throwing food away--so I've been eating a lot of pumpkin soup. And there's nothing more frustrating that eating something that isn't quite right! Too garlicky. Way too spicy. Too rich and unhealthy. Sigh.

And then, over the weekend, finally...perfection. I tossed all the recipes in the rubbish bin and decided to wing it, and whaddaya know...finally, something I can rave about. Huzzah! Not only is the colour of this soup beautiful and vibrant, but it lets the pumpkin shine as the main ingredient while still maintaining a complex flavour profile. It's also super easy and quick to whip up--and even better the next day.

Pumpkin Soup
makes about 3 servings

What You Need
2 tablespoons butter
1 medium shallot, diced
2 small leeks, white and light green parts only, washed well and thinly sliced
1 stalk celery, sliced in half lengthways and diced small
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh sage, minced
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 cups pumpkin puree (Make your life easy and use the tinned stuff; just make sure it's pure pumpkin and not pumpkin pie filling)
3 cups low-sodium chicken broth
3 tablespoons heavy cream
freshly ground pepper, to taste

You'll need an immersion blender for this one, or, work in batches pureeing in a standard blender.

What You Do
1. In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, melt the butter until the foam subsides and it turns a lovely light golden-brown colour. Keep  close eye on it, as it can go from beautifully nutty and brown to blackened and burnt within seconds. Add your shallot, leeks and celery and saute for 5-7 minutes or until soft and golden brown. Add the garlic and sage and cook for 1-2 minutes more until fragrant.

2. Pour in your wine and let it simmer and reduce until there is no liquid left. Add the broth and the pumpkin puree and stir well to combine. Simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. Remove from heat and puree with an immersion blender. Taste, and adjust salt and pepper as necessary. I find I usually need about 4 turns from a pepper grinder, and actually I don't use any salt since I think the broth is plenty salty enough. Stir in the 3 tablespoons of heavy cream, and serve!

If you wanna be all fancy-pants, serve it with a couple of whole sage leaves fried quickly in butter. A multigrain, highly seeded bread would be delicious toasted alongside this.

Liquor: Pumpkin Juice!

It's Halloween, so of course everything is pumpkin EVERYTHING right now! However, the inspiration for this particular recipe actually comes from my nearest and dearest favourite fantasy series...Harry Potter. These are the books that opened the world of fantasy, magic and make-believe to me, that provided me--as a geeky, gangly, unpopular and painfully awkward 11-year-old--another world to disappear into when mine was so unbearable.

I am only slightly less awkward and gangly as a 23-year-old and about eleventy-billion times more geeky (hello Hunger Games, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and Batman...) and I still love Harry Potter as much as I did at the first turn of the first page. And since it's Halloween, the movies have been playing on ABC Family every weekend and I've been loving every minute. :)

Pumpkin juice is a beverage often enjoyed by Harry, Ron, and Hermione and in my current inundation with pumpkins, I decided to give it a whirl. I know it *sounds* weird, but I assure you it is delicious, refreshing, interesting, and definitely worth a shot! Now of course...the kiddos enjoy this straight up, but I discovered that it's even MORE delightful with a splash of Maker's Mark over ice. My girl friend Tiny Bird preferred it with some Gosling's dark spiced rum, and Lilypad liked it with brandy. (Drinking it in her Hermione Granger Halloween costume, natch.)

Pumpkin Juice
makes about 5 cups

What You Need
1 small pumpkin, known as a pie pumpkin in most stores OR 1 cup tinned pumpkin puree (100% pure puree, not pumpkin pie filling!)
2 cups apple juice (I used the freshly pressed Simply Apple brand, which is stored next to the refrigerated lemonades in your supermarket)
1 cup white grape juice
1 cup pineapple juice
Dash of ground ginger
Dash of cinnamon

Now, here's the thing. I'm currently on a kick about doing everything from scratch, so I made my own pumpkin puree. It was a fair amount of work, and it turned out smoother and a bit thinner in consistency and lighter in color than the kind you get from the tin. It takes time and a bit of patience, but no special skills. Feel free to make your life easier and just use one cup of the tinned stuff, skip to step 3, and we're good to go.

What You Do
1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Slice the pumpkin in half from pole to pole and scrape out the seeds and stringy bits. I found this to be easier after pricking it with a fork in several places and microwaving for 1 minute. Less likely have a knife slip and stab yourself this way. Unless there's something we need to talk about. Lay the halves facedown on a baking sheet and bake for 45 minutes to an hour or until very soft. (It made the whole house smell sweet and wonderful as the natural sugars in the flesh were rendered out!)

2. When the pumpkin is cool enough to handle, slip the skins off (they turned very leathery in the oven, very interesting) and discard. Using a fine mesh sieve and a rubber spatula, working in batches, force the pumpkin flesh through the sieve into a bowl. This was the most time consuming part, for me, because you really have to mash it through thoroughly, scraping as you go. Toss the pulpy mess left in the sieve. Stir your beautiful puree together (it has a natural tendency to separate from its juices) and measure out 1 cup.

 
3. In a pitcher, stir together all of the juices and the pumpkin, along with the spices, until the pumpkin is completely dissolved. Chill until very cold, and serve over ice after stirring once again. Spike as needed. :)

Thanks for everything, JK.