Try With Me: Mini Pumpkin Cakes

My favorite thing about growing up in New England would have to be that I get to experience every season, there’s nothing halfway about it! And now one of my favorite seasons is upon us! Autumn! It’s all very exciting and it’s even more exciting that there are so many fall related recipes I can try out. I’m not much of a baker but I thought it would be fun to try out a recipe I found a while back (but didn’t dare attempt until it was fall because that’s just unacceptable). I actually found this recipe on a blog called Preppy Kitchen by John, he makes some absolutely beautiful desserts that I think everyone should check out! Probably gonna spend this fall making a ton of topical desserts from his website 😅 but I don’t see any harm in that. Today I wanted to share my experience of making Mini Pumpkin Cakes! They’re tiny, adorable, and shaped like pumpkins. I made a couple of minor changes but they still came out tasting delicious. So, without further ado, let’s get started with the recipe:

Ingredients:

For the cake:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ginger
• 1/4 tsp five spice
• 1 pinch nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar lightly packed
• 1/2 cup melted coconut oil
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup plain yogurt
• 1 (15 oz) can pumpkin puree
• 3 large eggs
• 2 cans of Vanilla frosting (1 lb)
• Orange gel food coloring (5-10 drops, depending on orange preference)

Cream Cheese Frosting

• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Special Tools (oooh):

• 2 doughnut trays
• Sifter
• Rubber Spatula
• Piping Bag (Optional, but helpful)

Directions:

As with any good baking recipe the first thing you’re going to want to do is preheat your oven and prepare your baking dish. Preheat to 350℉ and butter and flour your doughnut tray. Whew, wow, I would say you’re pretty much an expert at this point. I’m impressed and extremely proud of how far we’ve come, together. Amazing what can be done when you put your mind to it. Moving right along. Next sift your flour, baking powder, and baking soda into a mixing bowl and whisk together. In a separate bowl add all spices together and your salt. Then sift them into flour mixture and whisk it thoroughly.

So far, so good! Next step takes a little more manual labor but it’s nothing all of you can’t handle. With a rubber spatula cream together both your sugars and both the oils in a LARGE mixing bowl (something I wish I knew before I started 😅😭). Cream until everything is smooth. Next you can mix in your yogurt and finally you can add in each egg, one at a time. And guess what?! Those are the wet ingredients all ready!

Now comes the second most fun part of the recipe, mixing it allll together. Ooooooh! Simply mix the dry ingredients into the sugar/eggs mixture in three batches, alternating with the pumpkin puree. If that sounds a little confusing, that’s my bad– Mix one third flour mixture into sugar/eggs and then one third pumpkin mixture into sugar/eggs, then repeat until everything is mixed in. And now the batter is done! That’s half the recipe. You can probably just give yourself a break for making it this far because come on…that was a lot of work and you earned it. Hahahaha, no. You need to first get these in the oven! So fill your doughnut tins all the way to the top with batter (covering the middle hole maker, this isn’t standard doughnut making practice).

This recipe can make up to three trays of over sized doughnuts, so if you have three doughnut trays this is the time to pull them out…if you don’t like myself, well, its going to be a long night (or day) won’t it?😅 Bake the doughnuts for 20 minutes. And now, you can take a little break. Nice, well deserved. I hope you did something fun during your break. Did you take a nap? Read a book? Watch 20 minutes of a movie? Watch one episode of The Office? Read some of my other recipes? This is me giving you some great suggestions on what you can do. Well, would you look at the time!

Time to pull out those pumpkin doughnuts. Your kitchen should be smelling like pumpkins and joy and leaves, but, like, sugary leaves. All things relating to fall. Your doughnuts will look like muffins, but don’t worry, that’s normal! First, turn them out onto a cooling rack to cool (no kidding) for about 20 minutes or until room temperature. In the meantime you can whip up some cream cheese frosting. Pretty simple stuff and can be achieved by hand or with an electric or stand mixture. Up to you! I used a spatula just because I didn’t feel like whipping out the electric mixture for this. Mix up your softened, room temperature, cream cheese and then slowly add in powdered sugar. I would suggest sifting the sugar to avoid any lumps. I speak from experience of not sifting…shame😪. But cooking and baking are about learning from mistakes, mistakes I made so you guys can avoid them😆. Lastly, mix in the vanilla extract.

Ah, it looks like the pumpkin cakes have cooled. It’s time to assemble them and make these deserve the name “pumpkin” cakes. This…this is THE most fun part of the recipe. Also, probably the most time consuming, but still THE most fun! Okay, so first using a serrated knife cut off the edges of the donuts that went out of the doughnut space and then take a little off the top to flatten out the non-hole part. For each pumpkin you will need two doughnut pieces to assemble. Put a little cream cheese frosting on the flat edge of the doughnut and put another doughnut flat face down on that.

Now, take your frosting and dye it orange with some gel food coloring. I didn’t have orange so I simply mixed red and yellow (My primary color knowledge came into play pretty heavily here) until I got a desired orange color. Use what you have to get the color pumpkin you like! To frost, put the frosting in a piping bag or Ziploc bag and cut the tip off. Start by frosting the bottom then placing the pumpkin on a piece of parchment paper. Start frosting in upwards streaks. Then, go back and smooth the streaks as best you can. Then, allow frosting to chill in fridge for 15-20 minutes 🥶

After chilling, take the pumpkin out of the fridge and smooth it into a spherical shape as best you can. The best way to do this is to roughly use a spatula and then to really get it smooth wet your fingers with some water and just smooth down the frosting. It really works! Trust me. Once the frosting is smooth you can start to create the pumpkin shape. Using a flexible piece of plastic (I used the lid of my frosting tin) cut it into a curved v shaped and just go from the bottom of the pumpkin and upwards to create a pumpkin segment. The pictures will probably give a better explanation than my words:

Once you have these initial markings in the frosting you can chill again for a few minutes. Then come back with your fingers and smooth out all the harsh edges to make a more pumpkin shaped cake! You can smooth and shape however much you like until you get a desired pumpkin shape. I’m no expert but I thought mine came out looking like some mighty fine, cute pumpkin cakes. Almost forgot! For the stems you can use any number of things; pretzels, chocolate, a stick, or Preppy Kitchen used a real pumpkin stem! I decided to use the shell of a brazil nut…kind of random, I know, but it was the most natural stick-like thing I could find. So, that’s the end of this Try With Me, I hope I’ve inspired you to try out something new! Or not, that’s okay. If I just made you crave pumpkin cakes that’s a pretty good start. Happy Baking!

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