Birthday Cake

Alex's grandma came out to visit us this week from Minnesota. Her birthday was this week so we greeted her with a yummy birthday cake!

A couple of years ago, Williams Sonoma came out with their pumpkin shaped muffin pans. I fell in love with them instantly and had to have a fun, easy recipe to go with my pumpkin shaped muffin pan. You can almost always find a sweet deal on Betty Crocker cakes mixes (which I am well stocked with) so I used a Spice cake mix and added none other than pumpkin puree to it. I now crave this sweet when the weather gets cold.

Well, the weather has cooled a little and I had a cake to make so I turned to my easy Pumpkin Spice Cake recipe for Grandma's birthday cake.

Pumpkin Spice Cake:

1 box Spice cake mix

1 small can pumpkin puree

Follow the instructions on the cake box and add the can of pumpkin puree. Mix and follow the cooking instructions on the box. This makes for a SERIOUSLY moist cake. Next time I make it...because you know I will make it a couple of times since the weather is just barely cooling...I'm going to omit the oil from the cake box instructions and use the pumpkin puree in its place.

I scored a pretty sweet Cream Cheese Frosting recipe at Slash.com. I waited to frost the cake until the next day. I left the cakes in the pan and covered them with plastic wrap.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

Beat 8 oz. cold cream cheese (not rock solid, but it means you can use it straight out of the refrigerator) with 5 Tbsp. softened butter and 2 tsp. vanilla until combined. Gradually add 2 c. powdered sugar that has been sifted after measuring. Continue to add more sifted powdered sugar until you reach a consistency and sweetness that fits your taste. No softening the cream cheese (though you do have to plan ahead with the butter). No whipping to a certain point that occurs for all of ten seconds before it's ruined. The hardest part is not eating the frosting straight from the bowl by the spoonful.
This was a FABULOUS cake! Again, next time I will omit the oil from the cake recipe and just use the pumpkin puree because it was way moist...but not to a fault. The frosting ROCKED! Yes, I'm not very creative when it comes to decorating cakes...I am plain old boring. I'm just lucky when I make a double layered cake that the top cake doesn't slide off the bottom cake. Yes, that has happened to me...on the first birthday I celebrated with Alex. He got a carrot cake that slide around like a hockey puck on fresh ice.