Pumpkin Crumble Cake

My father in law bought me one half pumpkin and my initial intention was just to puree some of it for infant food and I had no idea of what to do with the balance of it. C has been pestering me to do a baking project with her. After having the second addition in the family, I will only bake during weekends when hubby helps to take care of P. I will try to spend half morning with C in the kitchen and have fun. If not, I will bake at night during weekends when both kids are asleep.

I did this impromptu project with C two days ago during night time. Yeah, I just wanted to get rid of the pumpkin in the fridge but the main reason was because I miss baking so so much that if I were not dead tired, I would love to spend some time in the kitchen trying out new recipes and having fun with C.

This recipe was taken from the book writen by Agnes Chang, entitled 'I can bake'. The recipe called for creaming method but I was really lazy to take out my hand mixer which I put in the store so I changed using the two mixing bowls method instead i.e to put all the dry ingredients in one bowl and wet ingredients in another and mixed the dry to the wet later on. Not sure whether because of this that the cake turned out to be a little dense and not so fluffy!

Of all the ingredients needed, I totally forgot about the milk so I didn't use milk for the recipe. Surprisingly, it turned out quite well if not perfect. I like the natural yellowish colour of the cake and the walnuts crumble on top. The cake looked so gorgeous with simple nuts crumble on top by itself. Though I must admit that this cake is very sweet but I don't mind having it as a treat once a while.


PUMPKIN CRUMBLE CAKE

Ingredients

300g self rising flour, sifted
200g butter
200g pumpkin
180g castor sugar
120ml milk
3 eggs
1 tbsp rum (optional)

For the crumble topping:
120g walnuts
1/2 tsp cinnamon
75g butter
90g sugar
3 tbsp of plain flour

Method (Altered using two mixing bowls method)

1. Steam the pumpkin and mash with a masher or the back of a fork.

2. Melt butter and put aside to let cool.

3. Preheat oven to 180 deg C/350 deg F. Grease and baseline a 9inch cake pan.

4. Whisk eggs in one bowl and add in the sugar, rum, butter and milk. Add in the pumpkin and stir well.

5. In another bowl sift the flour. When finished, fold the flour in 3 batches into the wet ingredients.

6. As for the crumble, coarsely chopped the walnuts and slightly toast them for 5 to 10 minutes. Mixed the walnuts with 3 tbsp plain flour, sugar and cinnamon. Cut in butter.

7. Pour half the batter in the cake tin then add dollops of the walnut crumble to the batter. Save half of the crumble for the topping. Pour in the balance half of the batter and finish up with the walnuts crumble spread on top.

8. Put in the oven and bake for about 1 hour.

Notes:
1. I used plain flour since I don't have self rising flour. Therefore, I added 1 tsp of baking powder to the flour.