Pumpkin Cake: "Rose's Heavenly Cakes" Cookbook

For Thanksgiving I wanted to take a cake to my parents' house. Nothing fancy or sculpted or fondanted (yes I know that's not really a word). Just a yummy cake. There had been a cake I had been dying to make for awhile from one of my newer cookbooks: the "Pumpkin Cake with Burnt Orange Silk Meringue Buttercream" from "Rose's Heavenly Cakes" by Rose-Levy Beranbaum. If you don't have a copy of this book or Rose's "The Cake Bible" you really owe it to yourself to get them. The recipes are wonderful and the books are just packed full of baking knowledge. And my favorite part? Everything is given in weights!!!! YAY!!! I use my kitchen scale as much as possible- way more precise than using measuring cups and less dishes to do. Her website is realbakingwithrose.com; here you can buy her books and there is a wonderful advice forum as well.

I also figured this cake would be a good opportunity to use the Bundt pans that I purchased a few years back and never actually used. I bought them on impulse because they were marked down to $1.25 each at Wal-Mart; I got three.

Usually I am very good at reading recipes through, and setting up my mis-en-place. However, I had been stupid busy this week and when I started to put this recipe together I realized I had no walnuts, and no walnut oil. I skipped the walnuts and subbed peanut oil (The roasted kind that smells like peanut butter, not just the plain peanut oil for deep-frying) for the walnut oil. Here is my finished cake.

The main reason this recipe had jumped off the page at me were the words "Burnt Orange Silk Meringue Buttercream", but I was feeling extremely lazy and the buttercream in the book has three parts to it: making a creme Anglaise ( a type of custard), an Italian meringue , and then combining the two with orange juice concentrate and zest. Not this time- some other day, yes. Today, no. I had leftover ganache from other cakes so I warmed about 5 ounces up in a pouring measuring cup, and added a tablespoon each of Triple Sec and o.j. concentrate. This I poured over the cake as it sat on a cooling rack over a jelly roll pan.

The finished cake:

Can't wait to dig in!

Once again, if you enjoy baking, you won't regret buying Rose's books or visiting her website.