Bready or Not: Pumpkin Praline Cake
If you love quick and easy dump cakes, let me introduce you to one that is full of pumpkin goodness.
Last year I went through a stack of old issues of Betty Crocker magazine. I sliced out recipes that looked promising. This was one of them.
I was amazed at how easy this recipe was. It literally came together in the time it took for the oven to preheat. The flavors and texture are amazing: you have a cakey base topped with spicy pumpkin custard, with a nutty-crunchy layer atop.
Plus, you can cover it with plastic wrap and keep it in the fridge for days! It tastes even better after a day or two. The spices meld with everything.
My husband took this cake to work. He returned with an empty dish. The guys raved about it.
If you like pumpkin, if you like cake, this is the way to start your fall off right.
Bready or Not: Pumpkin Praline Cake
Ingredients
- 15 oz pumpkin puree
- 12 oz evaporated milk
- 3 eggs room temperature
- 1 cup white sugar
- 4 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice heaping
- 1 box yellow cake mix
- 1 1/2 cups pecans or walnuts, chopped
- 3/4 cup unsalted butter or margarine, melted
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350-degrees. Prepare a 13x9-inch pan by lining with foil or parchment and then greasing it well with Pam or butter.
- In a large bowl, beat together the pumpkin puree, evaporated milk, eggs, sugar, and pumpkin pie spice. It should be smooth. Pour it into the pan.
- Sprinkle the dry cake mix over the pumpkin goop. Sprinkle the nuts all over the top. Pour the melted butter evenly over everything.
- Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until a knife in the center comes out clean. Let cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate. Cut and serve from the pan; warm slices in the microwave, if desired, or eat cold.
- OM NOM NOM!
Bready or Not: Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Shortbread
Shortbread makes me think of autumn, so it’s only right to combine shortbread and pumpkin.
It’s been a while, but I have talked about my shortbread/autumn association before. It puts me in mind of kilts and bagpipes and happy family times.
Pumpkin lends an orange tint and a very mellow and pleasant flavor. It’s such a small amount that it doesn’t make the pieces feel tacky, either.
The original recipe called for dark chocolate. That’s just not my thing. I prefer white chocolate with pumpkin. Here, I mixed in white and semi-sweet chips. YUM.
Don’t be fooled by the fact that this uses an 8×8 pan–the shortbread is thick, so it makes a good bit. I cut it small, like I would with fudge.
Like most any shortbread, these keep very very well. I imagine it would mail well, too, if you don’t live in a place where it’s still 100-degrees in November.
Modified from Dark Chocolate Pumpkin Shortbread from The View from the Great Island.
Bready or Not: Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Shortbread
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter room temperature
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 3 Tbsp pumpkin puree heaping
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ground ginger
- 1/4 tsp cardamom
- 1/4 tsp cloves
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp allspice
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup chocolate chips white, dark, semi, etc
Instructions
- Preheat oven at 350-degrees. Prepare an 8x8 dish by lining it with aluminum foil or parchment paper and applying nonstick spray.
- In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together. Beat in the vanilla, pumpkin, and spices.
- Fold in the flour, and then the chocolate chips.
- Spread the batter in the pan, smoothing it out evenly.
- Bake for about 40-45 minutes, until the edges just start to turn gold. Set out to cool to room temperature, then use the foil or parchment to lift the shortbread out for easy cutting.
Store in a sealed container at room temperature.
OM NOM NOM!
Bready or Not: Pumpkin and Pudding Mix Pound Cake
I’m picky about my pound cakes. I like them moist. They should be soft, cushy, and spongy. Dry pound cakes? Bleh!
This pumpkin bundt cake is everything a pound cake should be. It’s tender and delicious without being sweet. The secret to the softness here is an entire box of pudding mix poured into the batter. Just as with cookie recipes, that pudding mix makes everything tender and chewy.
A slice of this cake doesn’t need anything to accompany it. You could serve this for a breakfast, brunch, or dessert. It keeps covered in the fridge for at least four days. I can’t vouch beyond that. It was all eaten.
Modified from Pumpkin Pound Cake at Sing for Your Supper.
Bready or Not: Pumpkin and Pudding Mix Pound Cake
Ingredients
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 cup brown sugar packed
- 1 cup canola oil
- 3 eggs room temperature
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 5.1 oz package instant vanilla pudding mix
- 15 oz pumpkin puree
- Confectioners’ sugar for dusting the top
Instructions
- Grease a bundt cake very well. Preheat the oven at 350-degrees.
- In a large bowl, combine the two sugars and oil until blended. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, cloves and pudding mix.
- Add the dry mix to the wet batter, alternately with pumpkin, until everything is well combined. Pour into the bundt pan--it will be very thick. Use a spatula to even it out across the top.
- Bake for 60-65 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool for fifteen minutes and then invert it onto a wire rack to cool completely.
- Will keep very well stored covered in the fridge. Dust with confectioners' sugar just before serving.
OM NOM NOM!
Bready or Not: Pumpkin Pucks
I don’t follow a paleo diet, but I do follow delicious food. In this case, delicious AND healthy.
These pumpkin pucks are rather like mini pumpkin pie custards with a slight nutty taste. That nutty taste is stronger if you follow the original paleo version of the recipe and use almond flour, which was my preference, though making them with whole wheat and all-purpose flour works well.
I also used different nut butters. Almond butter tastes the strongest–in a very good way–though cashew butter was fantastic, too. Once, I only had 3/4 cup of pumpkin, so I made up for the difference with applesauce. I found no major difference in taste or texture.
This isn’t one of those dishes I make for my husband to take to work. These are mine. Two of them make for a yummy, nutritious breakfast. Pucks also be an awesome snack, and with their size they are very kid-friendly. They keep very well in the fridge for at least a week.
Modified from Paleo Parents.
Bready or Not: Pumpkin Pucks
Ingredients
- 1 cup pumpkin puree applesauce can be substituted in full or part
- 1 cup almond or other nut butter
- 1/4 cup honey
- 2 Tbsp maple syrup
- 2 eggs room temperature
- 1/3 cup almond flour or wheat or all-purpose flour
- 1 Tbsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/3 cup mini chocolate chips optional, or chopped nuts or dried fruit
Instructions
- Prepare a muffin pan with dropping in cup liners, then spray the insides with nonstick spray. Preheat oven at 350-degrees.
- If your almond butter is very stiff, zap it in the microwave for 15 seconds or so to soften it. Mix pumpkin puree and the almond butter together.
- Add honey and syrup and beat in eggs one at a time. Follow with each of the dry ingredients until it's just combined.
- Fill the muffin cups to 3/4 full; a tablespoon scoop makes this easy, as it's almost exactly 2 tablespoons to fill the cups. Top with mini chocolate chips or chopped nuts, if desired.
- Bake at 350-degrees for about 20 minutes. They will not rise much. The tops of some may start to crack. Let them cool for a while and then keep stored in fridge. They'll keep upward of a week, if they last that long!
OM NOM NOM!
Bready or Not: Pumpkin Pudding Snickerdoodle Cookies
The name of the recipe is somewhat misleading. These don’t actually include pumpkin. Instead, they use dry pumpkin pudding mix!
This important ingredient vexed me. I found this recipe for pumpkin streusel pudding cookies at Chef-in-Training two years ago and wanted to do my own remix as snickerdoodles last year. The pudding mix is a seasonal ingredient. Foolish me, I started looking for it at Walmart in September, which is when I really want autumnal food even though it’s still 110-degrees here. No luck. I looked at every grocery store around. Still no luck.
Finally, the first week of November, I happened to be in Walmart. Lo and behold, they had the pudding mix! I bought several and resisted the temptation to cackle and dash through the store.
Therefore, you see, the timing of this post is so you can be on the prowl, too. Grab’em while you can!
Pudding mix is awesome in baked goods. It makes the end result soft, moist, and tender, and it stays like that for days. The pumpkin pudding here tastes like real pumpkin, but it has a lot more endurance. (If you want a real pumpkin snickerdoodle recipe, I posted one last year!)
This recipe makes a lot, too. I ended up with about 50 cookies using my teaspoon scoop.
Bready or Not: Pumpkin Pudding Snickerdoodle Cookies
Ingredients
Cookie Dough:
- 3/4 cup butter softened
- 3/4 cup brown sugar packed
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 small box pumpkin spice instant pudding mix dry
- 2 eggs room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 1/4 cups flour
Topping:
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 2 Tablespoons cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat oven at 350-degrees.
- In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar and white sugar.
- Add the dry pumpkin spice instant pudding mix and beat until well combined. Next, mix in the eggs and vanilla.
- In another bowl, combine the flour and baking soda. Slowly mix the dry ingredients into the butter-sugar mix.
- Prepare the snickerdoodle topping in another bowl.
- Form dough into small balls. Use a spoon to roll them around in the sugar and cinnamon. Place them on a greased or lined baking sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes.
OM NOM NOM!
Bready or Not: (Pumpkin) Bread Pudding
When I visited home for the week of the 4th of July, I wanted to make something special for my 90-year-old grandma. Like me, her favorite dessert in the world is bread pudding. Therefore, I set out to make her the best possible bread pudding.
Complication: her diet is pretty restrictive these days. She can’t eat most fruits. Nor does she need super-sweet toppings that will mess with her blood sugar.
I found a recipe at Will Cook For Smiles that fulfilled a lot of my needs. It produced a small batch. It included pumpkin puree, but in a small amount that I figured could be omitted without destroying the recipe. I could switch in almond milk for my own taste-testing comfort.
I also loved that the base recipe used King’s Hawaiian Rolls, which are pretty much the only type of store-bought bread I will still eat. It’s awesome. However, because I was going to be in my hometown, that presented another option. Central California has a large Portuguese community, and there’s an amazing Portuguese bakery less than a mile from my parents’ house. Their sweet bread is one of the most divine things on the planet.
I took my trusty kitchen scale to California so I could measure exactly 12 ounces of sweet bread, the equivalent of a pack of Hawaiian rolls. That ended up being about 2/3 of a loaf.
I prepared the bread pudding, tucked it in the fridge, then baked it after lunch. It cooked in exactly 45 minutes. We let it cool awhile before we dug in. I thought it was just about perfect with a drizzle of maple syrup over the top. It was surprisingly light and spongy–not heavy at all like some bread puddings.
However, the most important thing was my grandma’s reaction. She declared this to be the best bread pudding she had ever had, and she’s tried quite a few bread puddings in her day. Grandma was thrilled to have this as a dessert and breakfast for a few days, and said it was even better cold straight from the fridge.
I declare this recipe a win.
Bready or Not: (Pumpkin) Bread Pudding
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups milk almond milk works
- 1/4 cup butter melted
- 2 eggs room temperature
- 1/2 cup brown sugar packed
- 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/2 cup pumpkin puree optional
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 12 ounces sweet bread such as a pack of King's Hawaiian Rolls or partial loaf of Portuguese sweet bread
Instructions
- The day before, set the bread out to go stale, if desired. For a chewier result, use fresh bread.
- Preheat the oven at 350-degrees (if you're baking this promptly). Grease an 8x8 casserole dish. Cut the 12 ounces of bread into chunks. Melt the butter.
- In a medium bowl, combine the milk, eggs, butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin puree (if using) and vanilla. Whisk until all ingredients are combined.
- Spread the bread evenly within the dish. Pour the milk mixture over it. Press the bread in lightly to make sure nothing is dry. (If you're making this ahead of time, cover with foil and set in fridge for several hours.)
- Bake for 45-55 minutes, until the knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Serve hot, at room temperature, or straight from the fridge! Top with maple or agave syrup, nuts, whipped cream, caramel sauce, or fruit or nut butter. Anything is good. Plus, leftovers can be chopped into serving-size squares and frozen.
OM NOM NOM!
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