Pumpkin Cakes with Cream Cheese Glaze

Happy Halloween everyone!!

I love Halloween. It’s yet another thing about Fall that makes it my favorite season. Since we don’t get too many trick-or-treaters in our area, we go to my parent’s house and sit on the porch with a big pot of candy to hand out. I love seeing all of the costumes. Some of those wee-ones are really dang cute! As a side note, I did refrain from buying the cats any costumes this year. Even though I strongly argued that they would love it, Shannon had a very different opinion!

What's Halloween without pumpkins though, and these pumpkin cakes were sooooo good. I was delightfully surprised at how moist and tender the cake itself was, especially since I forgot to add the eggs until I was ready to pour the batter into the pan. Ooops! I was worried that the additional stirring might overwork the batter and make it tougher, but I guess it’s safe to say that this is a very forgiving recipe!



I baked the cakes in a cute muffin/bunt style pan that I think in a way resembles pumpkins themselves, but any regular muffin/cupcake pan would work nicely. Cream cheese goes so well with pumpkin, so I added it into my basic glaze recipe.

These cakes should really be eaten the same day if you glaze them. They are sticky and require many finger licks if you decided to forgo the fork, but the taste is really worth the messiness.



Pumpkin Cakes with Cream Cheese Glaze
makes 15 cakes

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup and 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup pumpkin
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease muffin tins.

In a large bowl combine sugar and oil. Mix in vanilla and pumpkin and eggs. (don't forget the eggs!)

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Gradually add to the wet ingredients and mix until combined.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Allow it to cool completely before glazing.

Cream Cheese Glaze
2 oz cream cheese (I used 1/3 reduced fat)
6 tablespoons powdered sugar
2-3 tablespoons milk

Whisk all ingredients together adding more milk to thin out the glaze to desired consistency.

Drizzle over or dip cakes into glaze.

Eat.


Nutritional Information:
with glaze
Calories 200.6
Total Fat 10.6 g
Saturated Fat 1.3 g
Polyunsaturated Fat 2.9 g
Monounsaturated Fat 5.8 g
Total Carbohydrate 24.7 g
Dietary Fiber 0.7 g
Sugars 17.2 g
Protein 2.4 g

without glaze
Calories 178.2
Total Fat 9.9 g
Saturated Fat 0.9 g
Polyunsaturated Fat 2.8 g
Monounsaturated Fat 5.6 g
Total Carbohydrate 21.1 g
Dietary Fiber 0.7 g
Sugars 13.9 g
Protein 1.9 g