Pumpkin Cake

So finally I decided to venture into pumpkin recipes. I baked this cake early on a Monday morning, for a pumpkin loving friend. I added loads of chocolate chips on top to make it extra special. I had taken the cake to my friend’s place for lunch. After our lunch, before I had reached home, my friends have started to ping me with messages, asking for the pumpkin cake recipe. So this recipe was a definite hit.

Pumpkin Cake:

Yeilds: One 9x9 square cake

Recipe adapted from Yammies Noshery.com

Ingerdients:

1 ½ cups -  pumpkin puree (I used canned pumpkin puree)

2 eggs + 1 egg white

3/4 cup - vegetable oil

1 ½  teaspoon vanilla

1 ¼  cups - sugar

1 ½ cups – plain flour

1/2  teaspoon – salt

1 teaspoon -  baking soda

3/4 teaspoon - baking powder

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ cup – chocolate chips

¼ cup – chopped walnuts

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 180ºC.
• Line the bottom of a 9"x9" square pan, and grease the sides.
• In a bowl, add sugar and oil, mix well. Combine the pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, and vanilla. Mix well.
• Combine the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and spices. Add to the wet ingredients and mix just until combined.
• Pour into the greased pan, sprinkle the chocolate chips and chopped walnuts on top.
• Bake for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool before removing from pan.

Pumpkin Halwa

Last year when we were in India, we visited one of hubby’s Uncle’s place near Oooty,Tamilnadu. We had a wonderful time with the uncle and aunt! His aunt is an amazing cook. The entire week that we spent there, she made so many delicious dishes. I had made note of most of them, and finally now stumbled up her recipe for Carrot Halwa.

I passed this recipe to a few of my friends already, and it has been a hit so far. So I decided that it was high time that I gave the recipe a try. I made a variation of the recipe by trying it out with pumpkin, and also because I bought a huge one the other day and didn’t know what to do with it ;)

Deseeded pumpkin, ready to be cut and grated. 

Grated pumpkin being sauteed in ghee.

The halwa was so rich and melt in your mouth delicious. So give this easy dessert a try for your next for your dinner party.

Pumpkin Halwa

http://chitra-frommykitchen.blogspot.sg/

Serves: 3

Ingredients:

2 tablespoon - ghee
300 g (net weight after grating) - grated pumpkin
150 ml - milk
150 g - sugar
1/4 teaspoon - cardamom powder
1 pinch - nutmeg powder

2 tablespoon – ground almonds (optional)
1 tablespoon - cashew nuts, split
1 tablespoon - raisins
1 tablespoon - ghee ( to fry cashew nuts & raisins )

Directions:

• Heat ghee in a wide pan.
• Add grated pumpkin and stir for 8 minutes on a medium heat.
• Add milk, cover with a lid and cook on low heat till the pumpkin absorbs the milk and pumpkin mixture dries up (approximately 15 minutes).
• Add cardamom powder, nutmeg powder, ground almonds and sugar. Mix well.
• Cook again on a low heat for another 10 minutes till the sugar well blended with pumpkin mixture and thickens / dries up.
• Heat 1 tablespoon ghee, and shallow fry cashew nuts and raisins separately on a low heat till golden color.
• Garnish with fried cashew nuts and raisins.