Pumpkin Spice Pudding Cake

This is tenth in my Muesli Bar Challenge series – a series of recipes for lunch box baking that are low GI, based on in-season ingredients, and that my school age reviewers prefer to the overpackaged junk food that is so aggressively marketed to kids.

This is a dense cake, almost the texture of a steamed pudding – which means it survives well being bounced around in a lunch box.  Pumpkins are well in season, and the bright orange colour is a dead giveaway for a food that is loaded with  beta -carotenes.   Pumpkins are also a good source of fibre and lots of vitamins and minerals. They have enough natural sweetness that the recipe only uses 3 desertspoons of sugar, which works out at less than a teaspoon in each slice.

The Recipe

Turn on the oven to heat up, and grease a 20 cm cake tin and line the bottom with a circle of greaseproof paper.
In the food processor, cream 60 grams of butter and 3 desertspoons of brown sugar. Add a teaspoon of vanilla and 2 eggs, then blend in a cup of cooled cooked pumpkin, ½ a teaspoon each of ginger powder, cinnamon and nutmeg and a pinch of ground cloves.

Stir in 1¼ cups of wholemeal SR flour and half a cup of sultanas.  If you go to the effort of tracking down an organic supply of anything, sultanas are top of the list. They taste noticeably better, and it’s no wonder – check this link for how non-organic sultanas are treated.

Turn the mix out into your cake tin and bake for about 45 minutes in a medium oven, till it bounces back when pressed in the middle and a skewer comes out clean.