Deliciously sweet roasted pumpkin cake with crunchy almond praline. Pumpkin Cake makes a nice warm autumn/ winter dessert to enjoy.




Once October dawn on us, I see lots and lots of recipe with pumpkin on my social media feeds : FB, Instagram, Pinterest etc.
I guess pumpkin and autumn (as well as Halloween) goes hand in hand.

Well... you can say, I am a wee bit late to the Pumpkin Party.
Anyway, I am not into keeping up with trends, well, as much as I wanted to but I always ended up lagging...

And here I am, in early November with my Pumpkin cake.

One of the reason for my delay, it is just that, I baked Pumpkin Cake twice to test out, before I could post it here, just to be sure.

And of course my photo processing, took me quite sometime, as I was not happy with the outcome.
Colours didn't come out right...
Fussy much? yes :P




Any how....

In Perth, we have pumpkin all year round.
We need not wait for autumn to enjoy pumpkin, especially butternut pumpkin or butternut squash as they are known too.

It is my favourite.
Butternut pumpkin are much sweeter, less fibrous and they make excellent dessert.
Roasting butternut pumpkin is one of our favourite go to vegetable, excellent with roast chicken or beef.

For my Pumpkin Cake, instead of steaming pumpkin, I opted for roasting pumpkin and then puree.
The natural sweetness is more intense, in roasting compared to steaming.




The caramelised bits of the butternut pumpkin, that makes the whole roasting 'business', appetising.
To bake my Pumpkin Cake, we just require about 1 cup of pumpkin puree. 

The remaining of roast pumpkin can be use to make pumpkin soup, or just scoop the flesh into your mouth. 
Oh so yum!!! :)



Since Pumpkin Cake uses about 3/4 cup of buttermilk, I just made my own rather than going out to splurge and buy a carton of buttermilk. 

The remaining buttermilk would most likely ended up in the bin.
Two simple ingredients with one step, you will have the buttermilk... ready to whip up Pumpkin Cake.


Praline is optional. Steps to make this almond praline are in the recipe below.

Someone once told me and the rest in his baking class....  a cake with different texture makes the cake more appetising and interesting.

So true!
Hence I added crushed almond praline, to give Pumpkin Cake some texture, as well as aesthetic appetising look.



I divided the batter into 2 baking pans (see detail in the recipe below).
I was going for aesthetic, to have that nice 2 layer Pumpkin Cake, but you can also bake the cake in one tall baking pan (see note below).

But if 2 layer cake is a bit much (it was for us, after the second trial....), you can wrap one cake in a cling film and freeze (without frosting of course). 




And for the frosting...

Sour cream frosting goes very well with Pumpkin Cake.
I am in love with sour cream frosting.
It's not super sweet.
Tasted light, unlike cream cheese frosting or butter cream frosting.

Here it is...
A deliciously sweet, moist roasted pumpkin cake with crunchy almond praline.
Roasted pumpkin puree adds smokey roasted sweetness flavour to the Pumpkin Cake.  


Pumpkin Cake makes a nice warm autumn/ winter dessert to enjoy.