Dec 01

Holiday Pumpkin Cake

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think there are enough hours in the day to be the perfect mom. Coming out of Thanksgiving and looking ahead to Christmas, I greet the holidays with joy and a little trepidation. Thankfully, I have no problem taking a few shortcuts. I doctor up cake mix (you knew that), turn bagged salad into a blue-cheese-crumbled-dried-cranberry-toasted-almond mountain of deliciousness, and have been known to slide a frozen lasagna into my own casserole dish and cover with homemade béchamel sauce and grated Parmesan. But enough confessions. Today, I am all smug about my new pumpkin cake. I created this recipe for Christmas Village in Nashville, this insanely busy holiday shopping event a few weeks ago. I was there with my new cake mixes and needed a recipe, some wonderful recipe, in which to showcase my yellow cake mix. As in all great recipes, it took a village. I poured my yellow mix into a bowl, adding the canned pumpkin, oil, eggs and a little cinnamon. But my daughter tasted the batter and thought it was bland. So while I was out, she added more cinnamon, a little nutmeg and ground ginger. And voila, our favorite pumpkin cake was born. Yes, it really is better with my cake mix. (But if you want to use the cake mix on your pantry shelf, add 3 tablespoons flour to the batter.) With fabulous quick cakes at our fingertips, we may not achieve mom perfection but we’ll have fun trying!

Here is the recipe.