220g butter, soft
100g sugar
100g soft dark brown sugar (cassonnade brune de candi)
3 eggs
425g pumpkin purée*
240g flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarb of soda
½ tsp salt
3 tsp pumpkin spice or speculoos spice**
For the maple frosting:
90g butter, room temperature
40g soft dark brown sugar (cassonnade brune de candi)
30ml maple syrup
120g cream cheese
candied pumpkin seeds, to decorate
Makes 1 cake in a 24 x 13 cm loaf tin
Preheat the oven to 160°C fan.
In a bowl, mix the sugars and the butter. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat between additions. Add the pumpkin purée and mix.
In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and pumpkin spice. Briefly fold through the pumpkin batter, making sure not to overbeat the batter.
Grease a 24x13cm loaf tin, fill with the batter and bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour and 5 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.
Leave the cake to cool in its tin for 15 minutes, then turn the cake onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely.
Once cool, prepare the frosting: Put the butter and the cassonnade into a bowl and mix until pale. Add the maple syrup and the cream cheese and mix for about 3 minutes until the sugar crystals have melted and you’re left with a smooth frosting.
Spread the frosting all over the top of the cake, then refrigerate for at least two hours to set the icing.
This cake keeps in the fridge for 4 days.
*To make pumpkin purée: buy a small Hokkaido pumpkin, cut open and remove the seeds. Peel and cut into 2cm cubes.
• If you have a steam oven, put the pumpkin cubes into a perforated tray and steam at 100°C for 20 minutes. Leave to cool before whizzing to a purée in a food processor. Only put in the cake batter once completely cooled.
• If you don’t have a steam oven, put the pumpkin cubes into a large saucepan of boiling water and boil until the pumpkin chunks are soft. Drain and leave to cool before whizzing to a purée in a food processor. Only put in the cake batter once completely cooled.
• If you feel lazy, you can buy canned pumpkin purée. In Luxembourg this might be quite tricky to find though, but ‘Home from Home’ usually has it.
**If you don’t have pumpkin spice at hand, you can use the following instead: 1 ¼ tsp cinnamon, 1 ¼ tsp ginger, ¼ tsp allspice, a pinch of nutmeg and a pinch of powdered cloves.
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