I have a confession….
I suck at making pies.
There. I said it. It wouldn’t be so embarrassing if I didn’t come from a family in which everyone seems to be gifted in the art of pie-making. I must have missed out on that special gene somehow. I also find that because I’m a food blogger, people expect everything I make to be amazing, and I’m telling you right now that it’s just not true. There are a lot of things that I can’t make well, and pies happen to be one of them. But that’s okay! I can make a pretty good cake, so for Canadian Thanksgiving this year, I made this pumpkin cake instead of a pumpkin pie.
Yum! It was every bit as good as a pumpkin pie. It was nice to have something a little different for dessert at Thanksgiving, but still with the familiar flavor of pumpkin.
The kids really loved this cake with the caramel sauce drizzled over it. I liked that you could taste the lemon juice and vanilla in the sauce because it balanced out the sweetness of the caramel and cake nicely. We added whipped cream on top of our slices of cake for a very decadent treat.
If you’re scared of making your own caramel sauce, don’t be. It’s surprisingly simple to make. You just have to stay by the pot and watch it carefully so that it doesn’t burn. Trust me, it’s easier than pie crust!
Ingredients
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 1/3 cup fancy molasses
- 3 eggs
- 2 cups canned pumpkin purée
- 1 vanilla bean
- 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 pinch ground cloves
Instructions
- In large bowl, beat together sugar, oil, molasses and eggs for about 2 minutes. Add pumpkin and beat until combined.
- Slit the vanilla pod down the middle and scrape out the seeds. Set the pod aside, and add the seeds to the pumpkin mixture.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, ground ginger, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, salt and cloves.
- Pour the dry ingredients into pumpkin mixture and mix together just until combined.
- Scoop out the batter into a greased and floured bundt pan. Give it a good tap on the counter to make sure the batter is level.
- Bake at 350°F (180°C) oven for 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
- Let cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes before removing from the pan.
- Continue to cool the cake completely on rack.
Lemon Vanilla Caramel Sauce
2/3 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 tsp lemon juice
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 vanilla pod (remaining from cake recipe)
pinch of lemon zest (optional)
- In a saucepan over medium heat, add sugar, butter and lemon juice. Whisk until the butter has melted and sugar has dissolved.
- Stop whisking and let it sit over medium heat until you see the colour change to a deep amber. This takes about 4 minutes.
- Pour in the whipping cream while whisking, making sure to keep your face away from the pot in case the contents splash out. Continue whisking as mixture comes to a boil and thickens.
- Once thickened, remove from heat and scrape out any remnants of vanilla seeds from the pod you used for your cake. Then place the entire pod into the sauce (and lemon zest, if using) and leave it to cool.
- When the sauce has cooled, drizzle some of it over the bundt cake. Save the rest of the caramel sauce for serving with the cake.
Recipe adapted from Canadian Living.
I’m not a pie pro either…more practice would probably help, but when cakes like this exist I can’t really be bothered with pie 🙂 That sauce sounds incredible!
This recipe looks like it should be very tasty and I would like to prepare this for my wife, however I find vanilla beans to be expensive. I have vanilla extract though, how much of this would I be using please?
Hi Michael, I would probably use about 2 tsp of vanilla extract in the cake, and another 1 tsp in the caramel sauce.
I’m also not very good at pies. It’s the crust and those “3-4 tablespoons of ice water” – it’s never enough. And when I add more it gets sticky and just doesn’t work well. My trick for a while was vodka… not that I was drinking it because I was stressed from Pie making 🙂 I was adding it to the crust in addition to water. It provided moisture while making crust but evaporated while baking. I finished my bottle and never bought another so my pies don’t work well now… I love your addition of lemon to the caramel sauce – great way to brighten up the flavour!
Ok I have got to try that vodka trick!