Best cake ever!

It's been a while, eh, folks? This past weekend was Lucius' birthday, so I baked him a nice homemade cake. A few days beforehand, I asked him what kind of cake he wanted:

L: A pumpkin cake.
Me: What's that?
L: I dunno.

Haha, so I googled it, and of course such a thing does exist! And I just roasted, mashed, and froze a bunch of locally grown pumpkin a few weekends ago, so this was a good excuse to cook with some of it. I cobbled together a recipe and it actually turned out to be the best cake I've ever had, so I thought I'd share it with you all. Now, I avoid refined sugar like the plague, so this might not be what most people think of when they think of 'cake', but I found it to be plenty sweet. And also the measurements are approximate because I'm not very strict about measuring and I tend to just wing it ;)

PUMPKIN CAKE

NOTE: this made TWO 9" round cakes.

3 organic eggs
1 stick organic butter
2 c pumpkin puree
dash of vanilla extract
2 1/2 c whole wheat flour
1/4 c molasses
chunk of evaporated cane juice, dissolved in a small amount of water (you can substitute honey or sugar to taste)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp each cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice
1/4 tsp sea salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix butter, eggs, pumpkin, vanilla, molasses, and cane juice or sugar. In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking soda, spices, and salt, then mix into wet ingredients. Pour into 9" round cake pans and bake for one hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

ICING:
-organic cream cheese (you'll probably need at least 1 package per cake, so get 2 if you're making the full recipe) or homemade yogurt cheese
-honey

Blend cream cheese with honey to taste, chill and then ice cake. I like to use yogurt cheese - to make it, take a quart of organic yogurt and place in a muslin-lined strainer inside another pot and let drain for about 8 hours or until the yogurt is about the consistency of cream cheese. You can save the whey that drains off and use it for cooking (Nourishing Traditions, the cookbook I use the most, calls for whey a lot for soaking beans and lacto-fermenting vegetables).

Mmm. This cake came out perfect, moist and springy, and the cream cheese honey icing was the perfect compliment to the pumpkin.

On the fiber front: I'm spinning my way slowly but surely through custom orders, and will be listing yarns very soon! Most likely there will be a shop update early next week. I'm going to spin spin spin all this month because I'm taking a much-needed month vacation to visit family in December.