- Hey, I'm John Kanell
And today on "Preppy Kitchen,"
we're making an easy and delicious pumpkin cake.
So let's get started.
First off, set your oven to 350.
And now, in a large bowl,
I'm adding two cups or 240 grams of all-purpose flour.
I also want two teaspoons of baking powder.
And two.
And one teaspoon of baking soda.
You can have fun and play with the spices in this.
So feel free to adjust.
But I love two teaspoons of cinnamon,
1 1/2 teaspoons of ground ginger
and 1/4 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg.
You could use powdered nutmeg as well.
Some other additions you could add in here
would be 1/2 teaspoon of allspice.
You could add 1/4 teaspoon of cardamom.
Any of your favorite fall spices would be lovely in this.
And finally, one teaspoon of salt.
I love using a sea salt for this.
It's nice and mild.
Iodized salt is very salty salt.
So if you're using something like that
or fine table salt, I would go down
to 3/4 or even 1/2 a teaspoon.
Sift it up.
Whenever you have spices, especially ginger,
it's a good idea to sift things out
because they tend to clump up.
And while ginger is lovely in small doses,
nobody wants a big mouthful of powdered ginger.
And I almost forgot
300 grams or 1 1/2 cups of granulated sugar.
That gets whisked in at the end.
Although I will say it from personal experience,
if you forgot and added the sugar in at the very end,
the cake still turns out.
It's that foolproof.
Now our scale is... (scale clanks)
Ooh, didn't fall.
Now our scale is done.
Whisk that sugar in.
This cake is so easy
and it's really like a nice stir together one
where you can make it
with little ones in the kitchen and have a good time.
And this comes later,
but there is this luscious cream cheese frosting
that gets slathered all over the top.
So good.
This gets set aside.
And we can go onto our wet ingredients.
Of course, we need pumpkin puree for this.
If you're making your own pumpkin puree at home.
Good. I love that.
Make sure it's really well processed
so it's nice and smooth
and it shouldn't be too watery.
If you're buying it like I am today,
I love using Libby.
It has a beautiful color, taste, and texture.
Not paid. I just wanted to share.
Some of the private label brands
that are kinda like just not the nice color.
It's a little bit too watery,
and the taste is just not as nice.
And I would hate for you to make a delicious cake
but be undermined by your ingredients.
Mm-mm.
Not on my watch.
That's 15 ounces or 425 grams.
I'm also adding in four room-temperature, eggs.
You do not wanna have ice cold ingredients going
into your cake batter.
They don't mix up as well.
And your cake isn't gonna bake up as nicely.
The batter should be totally room temperature
or even warm, in some cases.
And that way, the center will be done
and the edges won't be burnt.
Four beautiful large eggs.
I want one cup or 240 mLs of veggie oil.
And if you wanted to, you don't have to use veggie oil.
It could be another light flavorless oil.
Avocado oil.
You could use like rapeseed oil.
You could even use olive oil if you wanted to.
It will have the slightest olive oil texture to it
or flavor to it.
But very slight.
You only notice it when you're making the cake,
not when you're eating it.
And of course I want two teaspoons
of a nice vanilla extract.
This one is homemade.
It's so exciting to use your own vanilla extract.
Try it out. (bright music)
We're gonna whisk this up until it is nice and smooth.
Break those egg yolks up.
All the fun flavors are in the dry ingredients.
The ginger, the nutmeg, the cinnamon.
What we end up here with is a nice, beautiful mixture
that's full of water.
The pumpkin really retains moisture
and it is a magical ingredient
that gives you a pillowy soft cake.
It's good for cupcakes, cakes,
and I have a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie
on the blog and on the channel that is so good.
It is such a good cookie.
Oh my gosh.
Come take a look at this color.
It's really pretty.
Well, look at that.
So nice.
So I'm supposed to pour the wet into the dry
but I mixed up my bowls.
This was too small for that.
But you can pour the dry into the wet
and it won't make any difference.
So pour the dry into the wet
or vice versa.
Now you're gonna stir it together
until just combined.
Before, you could have whisked the flour forever.
You could have whisked the dry ingredients
for as long as you want.
Here, we're gonna be very gentle
and mix it up just until the flour disappears.
If you over-mix any cake batter,
you will activate the gluten,
which is a protein in the flour.
And what happens is you bake your cake, bread, or cookies.
It looks perfect coming out of the oven,
but as it cools, it begins to shrink down.
And when you take a bite of it,
instead of being melt in your mouth and amazing
it's a little bit gummy and dense.
And you're like, oh, what did I do wrong?
I followed the instructions to a tee.
But the problem was
you may have slightly over-mixed the batter
or very much over-mixed it.
And it totally changes the texture
and makes it really unpleasant.
I've had cakes that were like done perfectly,
grams and everything,
but they just got way over-mixed and they're...
It's not good.
Break your heart.
It's just not tasty.
That's another reason I love doing this part by hand.
'Cause I have really good control.
I can scrape the bottom as I go.
And I know that I'm not gonna over-mix.
That's the end of my TED Talk
on mixing your batter. (people clapping)
All right.
That looks really nice.
I also have a 9-by-13 inch dish.
You can butter and flour it.
You could spray it with baking spray.
Or you can line it with parchment paper.
This lets you take the cake out really easily
so it doesn't have to be stuck in your baking tin.
(bright music)
I love to like have it out
on a serving plate or a cutting board or something.
And not like have this kind of like beat up metal tin
that I take to the table.
Pour the batter into your prepared pan.
And by the by, if you wanted to add some extra things in
at the very end, some toasted pecans or walnuts,
maybe some chocolate chips, even crystallized ginger,
those are all gonna be tasty things
that'll add something extra.
Someone told me that pumpkins
and blueberries go together really well.
But you'll have to come up
and like share a dessert with me.
I'm not gonna make it.
Outta principle!
Give your pan a little shimmy
and smooth the batter out to the edges.
It should be nice and flat.
Just give this batter a nice smooth
so it doesn't have to level out by itself
too much in the oven.
My cake is ready to go into the oven.
350 for about half an hour
or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
In the meantime,
we're gonna make a luscious cream cheese frosting.
In the bowl of your stand mixer
fitted with a paddle attachment or a big bowl,
if you're using a hand mixer,
we're gonna make this frosting
starting with 3/4 of a cup
or 170 grams of room-temperature unsalted butter.
Cream that up for just a minute or two to get it started.
(mixer whirring)
I also have eight ounces or 226 grams of cream cheese.
And it's in a bowl because I softened it in the microwave.
It was too hard
and it's really annoying to have little clumps
of cream cheese mixed into your frosting.
So just microwave it at half power
for 30 seconds to soften it up so it's nice and pliable.
Cream cheese can go in now.
(bright music)
Along with a nice pinch of salt.
And if you're a little bit tired of having
plain old, delicious amazing cream cheese frosting
and you want something extra,
you can take the butter, brown it,
just cook it down until it has a beautiful caramel color.
Let it come back to room temperature so it's solid
and then use that.
And you'll have a beautiful nutty depth of flavor
and some little specks throughout.
It looks really pretty.
(mixer whirring)
I'm gonna cream this up on medium speed
for about two minutes
so the butter and cream cheese are really nicely mixed.
And then we'll add the powdered sugar.
This looks so good already.
Scrape your bowl down.
(bright music)
And now I'm gonna add three cups of powdered sugar.
You can do it all in one batch
or add them in multiple batches if you want.
Give that a mix, starting on low
so there's no powdered sugar explosion nonsense happening.
And in the meantime,
you can add two teaspoons of vanilla extract.
The vanilla and cream cheese are a match made in heaven.
Once all the sugar's incorporated,
change your speed to medium or medium high and whip it up
for about a minute until it's nice and fluffy.
You should give the bowl one more scrape down afterwards
because there's definitely some unmixed nonsense
on the bottom.
Following my own advice, of course.
Okay.
One more mix.
(mixer whirring)
And by the way, we're not building a cake here.
It's a sheet cake.
So if you want to have less powdered sugar,
you can use less.
It's totally fine.
If you wanna add more, you can add more.
It's a really easy recipe
to switch up to your taste.
That looks beautiful.
Now it's time to ice our cake.
(bright music)
I let my cake cool in the pan.
Now it's time to decorate it.
But I wanna show you the wonders,
amazingness of using parchment paper.
Easy cleanup, transfers right away,
and you have built in handles.
(bright music)
Okay, scoop that frosting up.
I love to use a triggered scoop for this.
So it just plops right on
and you get even distribution.
Sometimes you can have cakes
that are very, very delicate
and you don't wanna tug at them.
This frosting is like softer than you could ever imagine.
So it's not gonna tug at the cake, but it can happen.
And it's really fun to do.
Now for the fun part,
use your offset spatula and swoop away.
This is like the best part of the recipe.
Even better than scooping.
So add your nice swoops and have some fun.
That looks perfect to me.
If you want, you can decorate these
with little pumpkin candies on top
or a sprinkle of pumpkin spice
or cinnamon looks nice too.
Give it a cut. (bright music)
And you're ready to enjoy.
(bright music)
That is a pumpkin cloud.
It is so soft and fluffy,
topped with a luscious cream cheese frosting.
It's really a must-make recipe.
And it was so easy too.
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe.
And if you like this video, check out my pumpkin playlist.