Caramel Pumpkin Cake

Silky pumpkin pie is one of my favorite desserts of the Fall. With Halloween around the corner, there is no shortage of caramel candies either. When I was young enough to trick or treat, I remember picking out the caramels and the toffees among the sea of snickers, dum dums, and milky ways filling my candy bag. This cake melds together two of my favorite Fall flavors – caramel and pumpkin – as a caramel pumpkin cake.

The cake itself is very moist (I almost made it into a Bundt cake without frosting since it tasted so good on its own), so the the caramel frosting is there to dress the cake up so it’s ready for birthdays and celebrations. The recipe below makes one three layer 6 inch cake, which is equivalent of one 10 inch diameter bundt cake or a two-layer 9 inch diameter layer cake. I usually go for making 9 inch cakes, but it takes so very long to consume such a large cake that I’m beginning to see the beauty in 6 inch cakes too. The only thing I miss about having a large 9 inch cake is the larger decorating area – but we’ll save those cakes for birthdays to come 🙂

The fondant pumpkin on this cake was especially fun and easy to make. Below are pictures showing the step-by-step. Baisically, start with a ball of fondant that you tint orange with food coloring. Then use a toothpick to make markings where the pumpkin indents. Then take a small piece of green fondant (tint white fondant with green coloring) and roll it around your toothpick. Then plop the rolled green fondant onto the pumpkin base to complete your pumpkin.Outside of this cake, it’s been a while since I posted! I’ve been doing my clinical rotations as a third year medical student. Rotations have been great, and I love being able to for the first time take care of patients in the hospital in addition to reading about patients in the book and thinking about their disease theoretically. There are so many interesting people in the world, and talking to patients feels like getting a super condensed version of someone’s life.

While on rotations, I recently had a cupcake that was brought in by one of the staff members who is a talented baker. She had made panda-shaped cupcakes complete with ears, eye, and a nose. The cupcake was delightfully cute and perfectly fluffy all at once. I was in cupcake perfection and the more cupcake I ate the more I wished to bake cake again after not having made a cake for a long time. And that is how this cake came to be 🙂

Caramel Pumpkin Cake

Savoring Spoon

Moist delicious pumpkin caramel cake

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Course Dessert

Ingredients

  

Cake

• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup canola oil
• 3 eggs or 3 Ener-G equivalents of egg
• 3 cups all-purpose flour unbleached
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• pinch of salt
• 1 can 15 oz solid-packed pumpkin pure

Frosting

• 3/4 cup Earth Balance vegan margarine
• 1 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/4 and 1/8 cup soy milk
• pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 4 tablespoons soy milk

Ganache

• 1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup coconut cream not milk

Instructions

 

Cake

• Preheat oven to 350F. Mix sugar, oil with a whisk.
• Make Ener-G egg equivalents according to package instructions (mix with water). Alternatively, set aside 3 eggs. Add eggs to sugar/oil mixture. Then add pumpkin puree.
• Sift flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, pumpkin spice together.
• Add dry mixture to the egg/sugar/oil/pumpkin mixture, mixing in between.
• Cut 6 inch parchment squares and place into three greased (I use Earth Balance and smear over the sides) 6 inch aluminum cake pans.
• Pour batter into the pans, about 1/2 full each. Bake 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.
• Remove from pan and let cool on cooling rack completely.

Frosting

• Melt vegan margarine in a pot on the stove, and mix in sugar, soymilk, salt.
• Bring to gentle rolling boil for 3-4 minutes.
• Remove from heat, stir in vanilla, and let cool for 15-20 minutes. The mixture will thicken.
• Add powdered sugar in 1 cup at a time, mixing in between with the electric mixture. Add non-dairy milk one tablespoon at a time, to make the frosting creamier as you mix. I added about 4 tablespoons total.

Ganache

• Heat 1/2 cup of coconut cream on a small sauce pan until a gentle boil for 3 minutes.
• Pour over 1/2 cup of vegan chocolate chips in a separate bowl. Cover and let steep for 10 minutes.
• Mix gently with a whisk starting from the center to the outside of the bowl, until homogenous and a dark chocolaty color. Let sit for 15 minutes to cool before pouring onto cake.

Assembly

• Level each cake layer, cutting off the rounded tops (these make yummy snacks).
• Add frosting to cake board and place first layer of cake on top of board. Add frosting to the cake top, and add second layer of cake, repeat for the third and last layer.
• Crumb coat the cake and put in the fridge for 15 min to cool and seal in crumbs. Finish frosting the cake.
• Pour chocolate ganache over cake, and use an off-set spatula to push some over the edge to create a flowing effect down the sides.
• Add fondant pumpkin and some gold stars for decoration.