Pumpkin Cake with Maple Frosting - updated with photos

I recently made a Pumpkin Cake with Maple Brown Butter Glaze to bring to a baby shower for some college friends and it turned out great so I'm making a record for my blog since I'm definitely going to make it again sometime soon.

Because of scheduling, I couldn't make my potluck dessert the day before or the day of so I tried some make ahead ideas that turned out great. I had made doughnuts with maple glaze earlier in the week so I had all this delicious maple glaze leftover in the fridge. I baked a Pumpkin Cake using this popular allrecipes.com recipe, wrapped it up in lots of foil and layers of plastic grocery bags and froze the bundt cake. Then I pulled the cake out of the freezer the night before the party and drizzled the warm maple glaze on the cake when I arrived at my friends house. It was so easy and I got so many nice compliments, that I'm a little embarrassed.

Maple Brown Butter Glaze (make ahead, yields two cups or enough frosting for 2 bundt cakes)

3/4 stick butter
1 pound powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup maple syrup

1. Melt butter in a small pan over medium heat and cook until butter browns, but don't burn the butter
2. Place powdered sugar in a stand mixer bowl, beat brown butter and vanilla into the sugar
3. On high, beat maple syrup into the mixture until the glaze is well mixed and a little fluffy
4. Use immediately or store in the fridge
5. Before you glaze the cake, just warm up the glaze in the microwave for 10-15 seconds or until the glaze is runny and then pour it over your cake. Glaze will set or firm up in about 30 seconds after you pour it on the cake

 Melt butter on medium high and brown

Browned butter with little brown bits...should smell a little nutty, but not burned

Pour browned butter into powdered sugar in mixing bowl. Be sure to scrape in all those lovely brown butter bits

Pumpkin Cake (can also make ahead and freeze)

Wet Ingredients:
2 cups white sugar
1.25 cups vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups or 1 can of pumpkin
4 eggs

Dry Ingredients:
2 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Optional: add some other spices you like. I used 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Liberally spray Bundt pan with lots of oil+flour spray. Invest in the spray, it works like magic. Use it liberally, it'll make or break your Bundt cake
3. Sift dry ingredients
4. In a bowl, mix sugar and vegetable oil together well
5. Mix in vanilla and pumpkin
6. Blend in eggs until well mixed
7. Slowly mix in dry ingredients until cake is mixed
8. Pour batter into the Bundt pan (remember to spray it liberally with the oil+flour spray)
9. Place Bundt pan on top of a rimmed cookie sheet in case the pan overflows a little
10. Bake Bundt in oven for about 45 minutes. You'll want to check on the cake since every oven is different, but bake it until the cake is no longer raw and a toothpick comes out "clean-ish." Super goopy is raw, too clean is dry
11. Let cake cool in pan
12. Turn cake out onto a plate. It should slide right out if you remembered to use the oil+flour spray generously
13. Warm up 1 cup of maple glaze so it's a little runny. Just a little warm and pourable will do
14. Pour glaze over the top of the cake and let it flow down the sides of the cake
15. Eat it!

Note: Use the special oil+flour baking spray. Don't be cheap, don't skimp, just buy it for $3. You'll be glad when your cake slides out of the Bundt pan with ease. If you don't use the spray, your cake will probably be stuck in your pan and you'll be full of regret. Seriously, just buy the spray, it's worth the $3.

Be sure to spray that 10 cup bundt pan liberally with Bakery's Joy spray

Pour that batter into the sprayed pan...all the batter. Place on large rimmed sheet just in case it bubbles over

 Cake slides right out of the bundt pan because we used that Baker's Joy spray

Pan is pretty clean of cake crumbs because we used the spray. I just stick it in the dishwasher top rack to clean

Glazed cake! Adam thinks it looks like a volcano with molten lava.

Oreo Tasting

Adam has a special talent for making an event out of something seemingly ordinary or pedestrian. Tuesday night was a classic case of Adam's genius. To celebrate the end of our small group, Adam organized a blind Oreo tasting and served as our facilitator. Here's how it went.

• Everyone received a pen and an index card
• We closed our eyes and put our hands out
• Adam would carefully place Oreos into our hands saying, "Oreo #1 of 8"
• With our eyes still closed, we'd attempt to taste and smell these Oreos
• Adam would walk around with a "discard" bowl collecting uneaten Oreos. Kinda like a spittoon for wine tasting, but less gross.
• When everyone was done and the Oreos were discarded or consumed, we all opened our eyes and wrote down what kind of Oreo we thought "Oreo #1" was.
• Repeat eight times for eight cookies. 

The Oreo tasting was surprisingly difficult. Some were easy like Cool Mint and Peanut Butter. Other's were a little tricky like Berry Burst Ice Cream. Adam bent the rules a little on the Berry Burst and counted Strawberry and Raspberry as "close enough" answers. Reduced Fat Oreos were not even worth eating, I called it the "Little Stuff Oreo." Ice Cream Rainbow Shure, Bert was the hardest because the cookie featured three different stripes of filling so depending on which part of the cookie you tried, you tasted something different. 

Only one person, Zick, ate all eight Oreos. The rest of us nibbled and discarded. My favorite wackadoodle answer was "apple cider." I don't even remember which one they thought was "apple cider," but it was way off. Adam's coworker, Zal, took a sampling of Oreos home to her three boys and the kids had a blast tasting all the Oreos and writing down their answers. I have a feeling the Znekvik boys did not utilize the discard bowl at all.

Fort Knox and the Kiddie Federal Reserve

Adam's sister and brother-in-law, Zara & Zryce, have three adorable kids that sometimes need a little "motivation" for good behavior. A few years ago, they instituted a gold coin reward system where the kids are rewarded for various good behaviors, the kids "save" their gold coins to redeem them for various special treats. I'm sure it's a super common parenting framework and much, as in one other story, has been written about Zara & Zryce's gold coin system by Adam's dad. [check out story below]. 

However, let's call it what it is because I did major in Economics after all . Zara & Zryce have created their own household monetary system where they "print" money by supplying these tightly controlled gold coins. They've also set up a basket of goods with a price list that they call the "Gold Star Reward Chart." They are the Federal Reserve, the kids "employers," central planners and the company store all rolled into one entity. The kids can only cash in their gold coins with mom and dad who are the only ones who will accept them. Mom and dad set and change the prices for all special treats from iPad time to movies to dessert. The parents also set the good behavior "wage". The kids love their gold coins and they're completely bought into the system. They have every right to trust the monetary authority aka mom and dad. Fortunately, the parents are benevolent autocrats and the kids are motivated toward good behavior so everyone's happy.

Now, this system only works because the kids can't earn gold coins from anyone else. They can't or haven't figured out how to go buy sacks of "counterfeit" gold coins from the very same store their parents are buying them from. Like many planned economies, price adjustments are sometimes required like the time when the price of iPad time basically dropped by half. When Zara & Zryce realized that they had an oversupply of iPad time resources, the changed the price for iPad time. 10 gold coins used to buy you 15 minutes of iPad time, but now it buys you a whole 30 minutes of iPad time.

Sometimes, there's a bit of a gold coin hoarding problem when the kids start obsessively over saving and their little economy gets stagnant because no one is buying stuff. While economic growth is not the main priority, gold coin hoarding does limit the money supply and then the parents run out of these coins to reward the kids. I guess at some point they have to print more money by buying a new sack of gold coins in order to inject some life into this little economy. We'll never know if they've printed more money because I'm sure the minutes to those meetings where Zara & Zryce set monetary policy are highly classified.

I find the entire gold coin alternate economy very amusing. I'm not sure what's the end game when the kids outgrow the system, but they each have a giant hoard of coins. Will Zara & Zryce retire the gold coin system, will they peg their gold coins to an actual currency and allow the kids to trade in their gold coins for cash? Will they peg to the US dollar or the Euro or maybe even the Indian Rupee? I also enjoy entertaining the idea of destroying the gold coin system from outside by devaluing the system and providing counterfeit gold coins. What if I bought my own sack of identical gold coins and started rewarding them willy nilly? How would Zara & Zryce "know" if the gold coins the kids have are legitimate or counterfeit? What if I donated coins by dropping them stealthily into the kids' mason jar banks? 

I have lots of great ideas, but I will never actually commit such economic atrocities because I myself would love to earn some gold coins for my good behavior. I wish Adam and I had a gold coin system. 5 gold coins for an extra dessert and 2 gold coins for three extra stories...that's an awesome deal!