Linus' Pumpkin Patch Cake

My mother's birthday was on Saturday. To celebrate, we headed out to my parents' home in the late morning with the plan to do some apple picking at a local orchard in the afternoon. Then I was going to cook our dinner to be followed by the requisite birthday cake. Mom has requested my pumpkin cake, which I hadn't made properly in about 10 years (as a layer cake as opposed to a sheet cake - I'm a lazy baker). To make it a little more special I decided to bring the full culinary-school-award-winning (there's a longer story there) marzipan pumpkins back from their retirement in 1996.

To make the pumpkins all you need is marzipan (almond paste), orange food coloring (I recommend paste as the color saturates better), flour, whole cloves, and a toothpick. Use the toothpick to add the food coloring to the almond paste. Knead, using a bit of flour to reduce the stickiness, until the color is well blended. Form into balls, then use the toothpick to press the lines into the sides of the balls. Pop a clove into the top and voila! you have cute pumpkins.

For the cake I used two 6" cake pans - the pans I had to buy for culinary school for the silly cake baking/decorating contest at the end of the baking section. But again, that's a longer story for another day. It had been years since I used those pans. However, you don't need to buy new pans. This cake recipe makes two 8" or 9" layers. Since the smaller pans make taller layers, I sliced them in half to create four layers.

Because my husband has a serious milk intolerance, I used canned frosting - cream cheese flavored, but I have included the scratch frosting recipe below. To frost this cake, I used 2 cans of the frosting. When I make the frosting from scratch, I tend to double the recipe to make sure I have enough.

Then I side masked with chopped walnuts. This is actually a relatively easy way to dress up a cake, but it is super messy. Be warned - you will find little nut pieces all over even after you think you got them all. But for the polished look, it's well worth the mess.

The best way to side mask is to pick up the cake and tilt it so that when you press the nuts in with your hand, they kind of start by falling into the frosting. Because my cake was taller and I was worried about layers sliding off, I didn't pick up the cake. I merely cupped my walnut-filled hand to the side at the top of the cake and kind of pressed them into and down the side. Messier, but it worked well enough.

When I was done I realized that I forgot to bring my piping bag with me, so the top and bottom edges didn't get prettied as I had planned. (I transported the unfinished cake stuff rather than a finished cake because I didn't want it to get wrecked on the drive to my parents' house.) I was going to do a dot border along the top and bottom edges. Oh, well.

Then I placed the marzipan pumpkins on top and then moved it to the cake plate.

Mom was very happy with her birthday cake, if her smile is to be believed.

This cake was my wedding cake, too. I wanted our guests to have a delicious cake and asked if our caterer/baker was willing to use my recipe. She was and it was awesome.

Anyhoo ... here's the recipe:

Linus' Pumpkin Patch Cake

2 Cups all purpose flour
2 Cups sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp each cloves, nutmeg, ginger
1/2 tsp salt
1 Cup oil
1 can (15oz) pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
3 eggs, slighly beaten
1 tsp vanilla

Add in: 1/4 Cup raisins, 1/4 Cup chopped walnuts

1. Blend together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt in your mixer bowl. Mix them a medium speed until well blended.

2. Add oil. Continue to beat until dry ingredients are moistened.

3. Add pumpkin. Mix again until well blended.

4. Add eggs and vanilla. Beat 1 minute longer. If adding raisins and/or nuts, add them now, stirring by hand.

5. Turn batter into 2 lightly greased, parchment-paper lined cake pans. Smooth tops. (NOTE: I merely use spray with no flour and it works well. And I highly recommend lining the bottom of your pans with the parchment and then lightly greasing the paper, too.)

6. Bake in 350F oven for 40 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. (It took nearly 1 full hour for the 6" pans to get done).

7. Cool in pans completely on racks. Then remove cakes from pans and remove the paper from the bottoms.

Cream Cheese Frosting: Cream together 4oz softened cream cheese and 1/3 cup butter. Beat in 1 tsp vanilla and a dash salt. Gradually add 3-1/3 cups sifted powdered sugar. Blend until smooth.