Spiced Pumpkin Cake & Muffins (check out the new spelling!)

Anicka, I await a taste of your apricot gift bread with great anticipation! And as far as uses for buttermilk go, my mom taught me a good one: just blend it up with some fresh mango and you have a divine, no-hassle mango lassi. I love it served on ice.

Now to the main purpose of my post - pumpkin! I've never been a big pumpkin pie fan and so I have underrated the use of pumpkin in baking. Then I found this delicious recipe on Epicurious for Spiced Pumpkin Layer Cake which I made for Vince's birthday. (I wish I had a more authentic pic!)


I'm a big chocolate (or cheesecake) fan and, like Claire, most cakes don't appeal to me but I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I've decided that my big complaint about cake is that they are too often dry. This one is moist & rich with flavour. I'd make it with less sugar in the icing next time - and less icing in general, but other than that it gets full thumbs up.

The really exciting thing, though, was that I modified the recipe the following morning with some of the leftover ingredients to make some killer muffins. I used whole wheat pastry flour, at least 1/2 the sugar and less oil too for a healthier and very tasty breakfast treat! As long as you stick to combining similar proportions of wet & dry ingredients, it seems like a really flexible recipe.