Pumpkin Streusel Cake with Chocolate Glaze
Posted: 10/15/2013 Filed under: cakes, desserts, recipes, snacks | Tags: baking, cake, dessert, fall desserts, holiday baking, pumpkin, pumpkin cake, recipe 69 Comments
Pumpkin Streusel Cake with Chocolate Glaze
Life is funny, nothing ever stays the same. Friends, please forgive me for getting all sentimental and philosophical on you, but this time of year brings back lovely memories for me. It doesn’t seem so long ago that by mid-October every year my boys and I would spend hours planning their costumes for Halloween, who they would walk the neighborhood with, and which candy I should buy to give out to the local revelers. But things have changed, my boys have moved on to begin their own lives, and my husband and I have been left here to celebrate Halloween alone, just us and a few bags of mini Snickers bars. I know, so sad.
In fact, things have gotten so bad that the local children will not even walk up my long, steep driveway for a measly mini candy bar anymore. In recent years I’ve had to go stand at the bottom of the driveway with “full sized” candy bars if I wanted to see any action.
Halloween is also that time of year when I can use pumpkin with reckless abandon. I love to use it in muffins, cookies, cakes and pies, and I really can’t understand why it’s not popular all year round. One of my fall favorites is this Pumpkin Streusel Cake with Chocolate Glaze. The cake part is mildly flavored with those traditional autumn spices, and the streusel filling is a perfect little surprise in the middle of the cake. What could be bad about pumpkin, nuts and chocolate.
So, one last thing. Do you think it would be weird if I asked my 25 year-old son to let me dress him up as a Power Ranger so we could go house to house trick-or-treating together? I’m just kidding, kinda’.
Pumpkin Streusel Cake with Chocolate Glaze
Pumpkin Streusel Cake with Chocolate Glaze
Adapted from “Very Best Baking”
Streusel
- 2/3 cup toasted walnuts, chopped
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 2/3 cup mini chocolate chips
Cake
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 1/8 teaspoon allspice
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 4 large eggs
- 1 cup pure pumpkin (15 ounce can Libby’s brand)
- 1 – 8 ounce container sour cream
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Chocolate Glaze
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 2 teaspoons cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 – 3 tablespoons milk
Directions
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and using melted butter and a pastry brush, brush the insides of the bundt pan with butter and lightly flour the pan, tapping out the excess flour.
- To make the Streusel: lightly toast your walnuts in a small frying pan over a medium heat. Constantly stir so they don’t burn. Toast just until they become fragrant. Allow to cool. Toss walnuts, cinnamon, brown sugar and mini chips in a medium bowl until all ingredients are incorporated. Set aside.
- For the cake batter, sift the flour, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, baking soda and salt into a medium bowl, and stir with a whisk to incorporate all ingredients.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the pumpkin, sour cream and vanilla and mix well. With the mixer on medium-low, gradually add the flour mixture.
- Spoon half of the batter into the prepared pan. Spoon the streusel topping over the batter but don’t allow the topping to touch the sides of the pan. You can choose to only use the streusel inside the cake, or you can also sprinkle some streusel on top of the cake also. Spoon the remaining batter on top making sure the batter layer touches the edge of the pan.
- Bake for 55-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool the cake in the pan for 20 minutes then turn out to a wire rack. Let the cake cool completely before you top with the glaze.
- To make the glaze: Sift the powdered sugar and cocoa powder into a medium sized bowl. Add the vanilla. Add the milk a spoon at a time and whisk until you have the desired drizzling consistency.
Pumpkin Streusel Cake with Chocolate Galze
Mama’s Tips:
Be sure to use the size egg that any recipe calls for when baking. If a recipe calls for “large eggs”, don’t use extra large eggs as it will definitely effect the final product.
You could also use mini bundt pans to make this cake. Just make sure you adjust the baking time accordingly.
The mini paper bundt pans used in this post were purchased from Cost Plus World Market.
Recipe: Easy
Pumpkin Streusel Coffee Cake
Posted: 09/16/2012 Filed under: cakes, desserts, recipes | Tags: baking, cake, coffee cake, pumpkin, pumpkin coffee cake, pumpkin streusel coffee cake, recipe 35 Comments
Pumpkin Streusel Coffe Cake
Wow, what a week it’s been. I think this was the first time in two decades I’ve been all alone in the house for an entire week. Imagine that folks. The husband was away on business in New York, son #1 was working and son #2 is away at school. I suppose this was my golden opportunity to do all those things a gal likes to do when there’s no one else to attend to but yourself. So, woo hoo! yippee! party time…okay, so maybe not. Did I squander my week of being unencumbered, should I just have let it rip?
Well, I let it rip okay. I spent the week on a non-stop bake fest. A real bender if you will. Seven days of cookies, cakes and breads. I finally had to say to myself, “girlfriend, just step away from the oven”. I ended my maniacal bake-a-thon with this Pumpkin Streusel Coffee Cake. What with autumn just around the corner it seemed so appropriate. So I’ve decided to give the KitchenAid a rest and return to normal activity.
Oh come on people, don’t judge me.
Pumpkin Coffee Cake
Pumpkin Streusel Coffee Cake
From Williams-Sonoma
Ingredients:
For the streusel:
- 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
- 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
- Pinch of kosher salt
- 6 Tbs. (3/4 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
- 1 cup chopped pecans, lightly toasted (see note below)
For the batter:
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda
- 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp. ground ginger
- 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
- 8 Tbs. (1 stick) unsalted butter
- 1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
- 1/2 cup sour cream
For the glaze:
- 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted
- 1 tsp. whole milk
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
Directions:
- Preheat an oven to 350°F. Butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan or a 9-inch cake pan with 3-inch sides.
- To make the streusel, in a bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt. Combine the butter using 2 table knives or a pastry cutter, cut it into the dry ingredients until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs. Stir in the pecans. Set aside.
- To make the batter, in a bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and salt. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together the butter and brown sugar on medium-high speed until well combined. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Add the pumpkin puree and sour cream and mix with the spatula. Stir in the flour mixture. The batter will be quite thick.
- Using a small off-set spatula, spread half of the batter in the prepared pan. Sprinkle half of the streusel over the batter. With a small off-set spatula, lightly spread the remaining batter over the streusel spreading the thick batter as best you can. Top with the remaining streusel. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool for about 15 minutes. Remove the sides from the pan and slide the cake onto a cooling rack.
- To make the glaze, in a small bowl, whisk together the confectioners’ sugar, milk and vanilla. Drizzle over the top of the cake. Cut into thick wedges and serve. Makes one 9-inch coffee cake.
Mama’s Tips:
To toast your pecans: Place them in a small frying pan over medium heat tossing constantly until fragrant.
Recipe: Easy
Pumpkin Cake And It’s Small Town Inspiration
Posted: 10/10/2011 Filed under: cakes, desserts, recipes | Tags: autumn recipes, baking, cream cheese frosting, dessert, holiday cakes, pumpkin, pumpkin cake, recipes 9 Comments
As a kid growing up in suburban Philadelphia I always looked forward to the the fall. It was a little sad to see the days get shorter as the summer slowly slipped away, because that meant it was time to go back to school. However, I loved when the air got crisp and you needed a sweater to keep warm. I could hardly wait until the leaves on the trees turned those glorious shades of red, orange and gold.
Having spent the past 31 years in Southern California I don’t get to experience that remarkable change of seasons anymore. I’m not complaining mind you. I fled the east coast so long ago because after the postcard perfect images of autumn, came those brutally snowy and cold winters that I could no longer bare. Yes, I was a wimp.
This week I’m visiting my friend Carol who lives in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It’s early October and the leaves really haven’t begun to change color yet, but there’s a crispness in the air and summer has definitely left the building. I have to say that the east coast is certainly at its best in the fall. Today we’re headed to a small village located on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River called Frenchtown. It’s a community of about 1400 residents and physically not much has changed from the late 1700’s.
After three decades of living in a city with ten-million people, I marvel that places like this still exist…and thankful they do. We stop to get lunch in The Frenchtown Cafe and I feel as though I have stepped back in time fifty or sixty years. The food was simple and straight-forward, and really, really good. And I loved the $6.95 price tag.
Not only is fall my favorite time of year because of the seasonal changes it brings about, it’s also my favorite time of year for food. Specifically, pumpkin. Oh how I love pumpkin in anything. So, we’ve decided to bake this moist pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting. It’s very easy to make and total comfort food. My kids love this one.
Autumn Pumpkin Spice Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
From Better Homes and Gardens
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 2/3 cups sugar
- 1 15-ounce canned pumpkin
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup cooking oil
- 3/4 cup toasted pecans
- 1 recipe Cream Cheese Frosting
Mama's Gotta Bake 