Pumpkin Spice Cake w/ Cream Cheese Frosting

I love cake. It is probably my favourite dessert of all time. I could eat cake every day. In fact, it’s not uncommon that I do…

(*Note: I also work out like an animal to make up for my cake obsession. Otherwise, I would most likely weigh 300 lbs. And as hilarious as that would be on my 5’2” frame, it’s really not the look I’m going for.)

I also love pumpkin. And spice. So, I combined the three into a magnificent Pumpkin Spice Cake. With cream cheese icing. Because cream cheese icing is a must with spicy cakes.

I also added pecans. Just ‘cus. They’re delicious.

Pumpkin Spice Cake w/ Cream Cheese Frosting
(Adapted from Martha’s Pumpkin Spice Cake recipe)

Ingredients:

CAKE
2 ½ cups flour (I used 1 ½ cups cake & pastry flour, 1 cup all-purpose)
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon pumpkin-pie spice
½ cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 ½ cups sugar
1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin puree

FROSTING
1 8-oz bar of cream cheese, softened
1 cup icing sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla

butter (for the pan)
pecans (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-inch square baking pan (I used a circle cake pan as my square one is still filled with casserole).

In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, salt, and pumpkin-pie spice. In a large bowl, whisk oil, eggs, sugar, and pumpkin puree until combined.

Add dry ingredients to pumpkin mixture and mix gently until smooth.

Turn batter into prepared pan, and smooth top. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool cake 10 minutes in pan, then turn out of pan, and cool completely, right side up, on a rack.

Make the cream cheese frosting. Mix the cream cheese with the vanilla and then add the icing sugar. Mix until smooth (you can add more or less icing sugar depending on how thick you want the icing).

Ice entire cooled cake with cream cheese frosting.

I made a small well in the top of the cake and lined it with pecans and then put chopped pecans in the middle – mainly because I had a huge bag of pecans in my cupboard I needed to get rid of. You can garnish this cake with whatever you like however, or just have it plain. It’s yummy either way!