Pumpkin Cake Home Study Assignment

Pumpkin Cake
2 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

4 large eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups pumpkin puree or cooked mashed pumpkin

Cream Cheese Frosting

1/4 cup butter

1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, room temperature

1 pound confectioners' sugar, about 3 3/4 cups before sifting

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 cup chopped pecans

Directions for pumpkin cake
Combine sugar, vegetable oil, and eggs in a large mixing bowl; mix well. Sift dry ingredients into a separate bowl; stir into oil mixture, beating well. Stir in pumpkin puree.
Pour batter into two greased and floured 9-inch round layer cake pans. Bake at 350° for 35 to 40 minutes. Turn out onto racks to cool. Frost pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting (directions below) and sprinkle with chopped pecans.
Cream Cheese Frosting
Sift the confectioners' sugar into a bowl.
Beat the 1/4 cup of butter and cream cheese until smooth and creamy.  Add the sifted confectioners' sugar and 2 teaspoons of vanilla; beat until smooth.  Makes enough for 2-layer pumpkin cake.

I made pumpkin cake as part of our Thanksgiving dinner. I did not change the recipe at all and I kept it the way it was. For this desert I used the creaming method. The creaming method is when you mix the batter until smooth and fine. This progress is similar to when we made different types of cookies in class. For example the drop cookies, cookies and cakes are a bit different but they are the same by how they need that really fine texture of batter usually containing a lot of fat and sugars. In class when we made the drop cookies it was similar to when I made the pumpkin cake because we shift the dry ingredients first then we added the wet liquids into there which added moisture to cold the cookie mixture together. For the cake I had more amounts of liquid so the batter was more liquefied so it can be easily be poured into the pan. I used this method because I knew it would give me the best results at the end if I used the biscuit method and used butter for my cake instead of vegetable oil for the fatty ingredient in my cake I would get bad results because it would be lumpy and not a smooth and moist cake to enjoy. The preparation method does matter on the type of pastry that you are making because you would get totally different  results.
 The pumpkin cake  turned out amazing as suspected from the aroma in the batter of the cake. The inside of the cake was really moist and soft. The aroma was breath taking it smelled of different varies of cookies and sweet pastry with a mixture of Halloween  pumpkins and the cream cheese and fresh pecans. The appearance was a 2 layered cake spread with cream cheese sprinkled with chopped pecans. Taste was very moist and soft that melted into your mouth with every bite. The warm cream cheese melted along your tongue with slight crunch from the pecans. I would do this again because it turned out amazing and everyone in my family enjoyed it.