Pumpkin Walnut Cake Recipe for Halloween and Christmas Day

Day 4, HUB #4

Halloween parties are popular for young children, teenagers and middle age adults who are party goers and dare to wear those Halloween costumes.

In our country, Halloween is not an observed public holiday but Christians community do celebrate Halloween in our own way. We have pot lucks, children dress up for kids parties and family gathering.

This pumpkin walnut cake has become a holiday tradition for my family during Halloween and Public Holidays too.

We don’t travel much during Public Holidays, so we would call up relatives and bring along our pot lucks to our mother-in-laws house for a family gathering.

During my leisure, I would bake this lovely Pumpkin Walnut cake for tea-time, rather than having unhealthy snacks and sodas which are lack of nutrition and chances of facing obesity for the children.

Little pieces of dice pumpkins mixed with dice red cherries and raisins are great combination that gives the natural sweetness and my children love the soft bites in between the pumpkin cake. Furthermore, they love the crunchy, tasty walnut on the surface which provides double the nutrition too.

Unlike any other cakes which are sweet and buttery, this pumpkin cake contains less sugar, less butter, less eggs but more pumpkin flesh and slices of roasted walnuts for those who love crunchy bites.

You could substitute walnuts with pumpkin seeds, almonds or any type of nuts that you fancy. Pumpkin cake is a healthy cake pump with lots of nutritious ingredients and you store it in Tupperware for a couple of days. Perfect snack to go with tea and coffee during tea-time.

Since, I do not own a microwave oven, I use my PANASONIC Rice Cooker to bake cakes because I don’t have to keep watch of the cake situation, preheating not required, no baking sheets and best of all, majority of the cakes always turn out well-raised, brown crispy sides texture and turns off the baking function to “Keep Warm” automatically.

Hence, I don’t have to keep looking at the clock while I could rest assure to continue with my other house chores.

• Frankly speaking, the PANASONIC Rice Cooker does not have the “Baking” function at all.
• I just pressed the “White Rice” button which baked the cake for 50min as other cakes also take around 45min-60min.
• When greasing the rice cooker pot, do not use too much butter.
• Otherwise your cake will turn out oily and greasy.
• Dip your index finger into the butter, spread out the butter around half of the pot.
• It doesn't matter whether the butter is insufficient because the purpose of using butter is to allow the cake to “come off” the rice cooker pot easily.

Pumpkin is an interesting and nutritious food. There are many benefits of using pumpkin as the main ingredient in this cake.

It is extremely low in :

• calories,
• rich in beta-carotene (beside carrots ) and
• pumpkin seeds contain protein, high in zinc, which most consumers are lacking in their diet.
• Pumpkin is best cooked and eaten with the skin on because the beta-carotene is only available in the skin.

While most people don’t like pumpkin cakes with lots of spices, I simply don’t add any spices into my cake. I can’t stand the smell of spices!

After mixing the pumpkin puree with the batter, it made the whole cake a little sticky, a little dense texture but for those who love the taste of pure pumpkin, you will definitely NOT regret baking this cake!

I love to sink my teeth into this sweet pumpkin flesh which gives great aroma and the taste of natural sweetness. I had baked 2 batches of pumpkin walnut cake.

The first batch was a little sticky, consists of plenty thick pumpkin puree and flesh. The second batch was totally different from the first. It was soft, fluffy, moist but I could not taste much of the pumpkin flesh nor puree. It seems that the puree was diluted into the batter as I had increased the amount of sugar, butter and eggs. To me, it taste similar to butter cake.

Anyway, this delicious pumpkin cake, baked in rice cooker is great for Halloween parties, Birthdays, Christmas Day and tea parties. For a quick and easy baking cake, do consider Pumpkin Walnut Cake for a change, for good health.

• Cut the pumpkin into half.
• Cut off the harden skin of the pumpkin.
• Weigh how much pumpkin you need
• Remove the seeds
• Cut the pumpkin into large cubes in order to soften them easily.
• Bring a soup pot to boil, half pot of water.
• Add in the large cubes of pumpkins,
• Boil until the pumpkins turn soft.
• Test them out by poking the pumpkins with a stainless steel fork.
• Remove the soften pumpkins onto a flat dish.
• Use the back of the same fork to mash the pumpkins flat.
• Leave them aside in order to cool off before baking.

• Slip your hand into your mittens and carry out the pot.
• Use a plastic cake knife to loosen the cake.
• Pour out the cake onto a flat plate.
• The cake is upside down ( bottom side facing up ).
• Place another flat plate over the bottom cake.
• Hold onto both plates with both your hands and flip it over.
• Remove the top plate. Now you can see the front cake.
• Let it cool for 10min before cutting the cake.

If you could not finish your Pumpkin Walnut Cake within a day, store the cake into a Tupperware or plastic container with a lid.

Make sure that the cake has cool off. Otherwise, moisture will develop in the container and the cake will turn stale easily.

Alternatively, you can keep the cake in the refrigerator. Heat the cake up in the toaster or microwave oven when you want to consume it.

Happy Baking !!