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Is there a flavor that more defines fall than pumpkin? I think not. I think I’m often more excited about pumpkin than Christmas.  Sure, the gifts are nice, but the taste and the smell of pumpkin is nothing short of amazing.  To kick off the fall season, my new friend and blogging buddy, Charity of Sweet Charity Pie picked an appropriately themed cake for us to bake.  You see, we’re starting this buddy blogging project, where we are going to work our way through Sherry Yards “Secrets of Baking” and before we both had the book in hand, we wanted to get started.  I’ll explain more about our project in the next post or two, so stay tuned!

I’ve only had pumpkin pie and pumpkin cheesecake.  Both of which I love. When Charity suggested this pumpkin cake I was totally intrigued!  It didn’t let me down.  The cake combines pumpkin, hazelnuts, chocolate ganache, cinnamon and coffee.  Its like the total dessert course in one bite!  I’ll post the original recipe, but the only change that I did make was instead of using cinnamon and heating it with coffee and sugar, I brewed mulling spices in espresso instead of water or cider.

Pumpkin Cake with Chocolate Hazelnut Ganache and Cinnamon Coffee Sauce

*this recipe is adapted from The Millenium Cookbook by Eric Tucker, and is written as a vegan recipe. This was made un-vegan by changing the soy milk to regular milk and using regular chocolate.

For the Cinnamon-Coffee Sauce

3/4 c. freshly brewed espresso, cooled
2 T mulling spices
3 T sucanat

Bring cooled espresso, mulling spices and sucanat to a boil and steep for approximately 15 minutes.  Bring to room temperature and chill until ready to use.

For the Chocolate Hazelnut Ganache

1 cup hazelnuts, toasted and shelled
2 cups heavy cream
1 lb. semi-sweet chocolate, melted (I used bitter sweet)

Chop hazelnuts in a food processor until very fine.  Mix with cream.  Stir in melted chocolate and mix to combine.  Place in fridge for 4-6 hours until semi-firm.

For the Pumpkin Cake

2 cups flour
1 T ground cinnamon
3/4 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/2 cup pumpkin puree (I made my own from baking pumpkins)
1/3 cup butter
3/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 c. milk
3 T minced fresh ginger (I used 1.5T fresh, and 1/4t ground)
1 1/2 t vanilla extract (I used vanilla bean paste)
1/4 t lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 350*F. Oil an 8″ springform or false bottom cake pan.
Into
a large bowl, sift together the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, and baking
soda.  Stir in salt and combine.  In a blender, combine pumpkin puree, butter, maple syrup, milk, gingers,
vanilla bean paste and lemon juice. Blend until well combined.

Pour the wet
mixture into dry mixture and whisk to combine. Pour the
batter into the pan and bake for 55-65 minutes until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. Let the cake cool completely in the pan and remove when cool.

To assemble the cake:

Slice
the cake evenly into three layers. I used the top portion that I cut off from leveling as a bottom layer when inverted.  Drizzle with the espresso syrup and then top with 1/3 of ganache.  Repeat with 2nd layer.  Top with 3rd layer and then use remaining ganache to cover cake.  Let cool for at least 1 hour and serve! Serves 10.

Lastly, head over to Charity’s site to check out her cake!