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Halloween Pumpkins

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Halloween Pumpkins

It has been a while since I last posted something.

I keep having these episodes of having certain interests and then my interests switch from the one hobby to the other for an amount of time, until it comes back.
And there is actually nothing wrong with that, but I do want to apologize for the sudden radio silence.

At the moment I also work at a bakery, and that also means I have less motivation to bake at home and go and experiment with recipes, but I’m back! With a delicious Halloween recipe! Pumpkin cakes, with actual pumpkin in it and a seasonal pumpkin spice, with on the back dark chocolate!

You don’t have to bake the cake in the pumpkin molds a regular cake tin is also perfectly fine, but in case you wanted to know you can find similar ones at Amazon. I myself bought them at a dutch baking supply store last year.

Here in the Netherlands you have similar spice mix to Pumpkin spice called “speculaaskruiden” we make a lot of seasonal bakes with it. And a lot of dutch people use this as a replacement for pumpkin spice since this is a more regular spice mix here.

Speculaaskruiden is a more complex spice mix then pumpkin spice and one of the big differences in taste is the Allspice, this is not used in Speculaaskruiden.

Now for the recipe of my cakes:

Ingredients:

  • 325 gr flour
  • 300 gr sugar
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 3 tsp Pumpkin spice mix
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 360 ml Almond milk (or any plant based milk you’s like)
  • 225 gr pumpkin cubes
  • 120 gr vegan butter
  • 2 tbsp
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 200 gr dark chocolate (optional)
Pumpkin spice mix:
  • 7 tbsp cinnamon
  • 3 tbsp ginger
  • 1 tbsp nutmeg
  • 5 tsp clove
  • 5 tsp allspice

Instructions:

Begin with heating up your oven to 180ºC.
Cook the pumpkin cubes in boiling water until nice and soft and rinse with cold water so it isn’t hot when you put them in the blender.
Blend them up with a little bit of the milk until it is nice and smooth without any lumps.
Put this aside and grab 2 bowls, 1 for the dry and one for the wet ingredients.

Sift the flour with the baking soda and baking powder through a fine sift and mix in the rest of the dry ingredients.

Back to the wet ingredients.
Melt the butter and leave it to cool for a bit so it isn’t hot when you pour it in with the rest.
Mix the pumpkin puree with the rest of the milk, the apple cider vinegar and the vanilla extract and then mix in the slightly cooled melted butter.
Mix this well.

The next thing up is the mixing of it all together. Mix the wet into the dry bit by bit so you don’t get any lumps but try not to over mix, just make sure all is folded in.

Grease your molds, and pour the mixture into the molds. Put them in the oven for about 30 minutes.
In case you bake the cake in 1 big tin, please check if fully cooked before you get it out of the oven. This could need a little more baking time.
If you use the small silicone baking molds like I have, you should be able to make at least 12 to 16 mini cakes.

If your cakes are fully cooled down you can start decorating the back with dark chocolate.
Melt down 200 gram, dip the back into it and leave to dry.
This is optional tho, the cakes are also really good without the chocolate.

Hope you enjoy it! Happy Halloween!