Pumpkin Spiced Cake or when to break the rules

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spiced pumpkin cake || cityhippyfarmgirl

I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

I knew there was something…but really couldn’t quite gather enough thought process to find out what. And yet slowly whatever it was, it built up. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t draw. I couldn’t take any pictures and I sure as eggs couldn’t think what on earth it was that was slightly sitting out of alignment.

So I stopped. Stopped trying to put my finger on it and closed the lap top. Said bugger the homework. Put another jacket on us all and headed out. The rules of the afternoon, the time constraints, the blah, blah, blah. Yep, today they didn’t count, as today….there would be no rules.

You know why kids can play so beautifully, for so long, so uninhibited? Because their rules are different, and they don’t care particularly if they break them. If the row of animals isn’t put away before going to bed, life turns out, does continue on. If homework isn’t done on a one off Wednesday, doing double the next day is actually ok because the afternoon before, oh it was rather awesome.

So why was it, that it wasn’t until I had stopped, did I realise it was all the rules that were choking me and leaving me on edge? I have no idea. Really absolutely none. But on the upside I know how good it felt when we broke all the rules that afternoon in late winter and I have every intention of doing it again soon.

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Now this is a quite a moist, dense cake, that for me looked like a cake, but tasted like a pie, it kind of broke all the cake rules right there.

Looks like a cake, but tastes like a pie… this was a fine thing to realise indeed.

 spiced pumpkin cake recipe || cityhippyfarmgirl

Pumpkin Spiced Cake

150g softened butter

150g brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

1 tsp cardamom

zest of a lemon

2 beaten eggs

2 tbls molasses

225g self raising flour

75g wholemeal spelt flour

1 1/2 cups cooked and mashed pumpkin (use less if you don’t like a moist cake)

Cream butter, sugar and spices together, add lemon zest, beaten eggs and molasses. Mix through pumpkin and then fold through flours. Pour mixture into a greased and lined loaf tin and bake for approximately one hour at 180C, (or until a skewer comes out clean.)

29 thoughts on “Pumpkin Spiced Cake or when to break the rules”

  1. Ive never liked the expression ‘time poor’. However it describes what we impose on ourselves on a daily basis. I’m pleased that you realise how we can choose to use spend time. After all we just don’t know how much time we have been allocated. To enjoy precious moments enriches us all. And, that will never make us ‘time poor’ during our lifetimes.

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  2. I love this post. Your story about rules rings very true with me, I totally recognised myself. Thanks for sharing and now I know what to do with my left over pumpkin, perfect!

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  7. Life is definitely better for some occasional broken rules. One of the hardest things to learn, I think, is which rules I find helpful and useful and which rules are just constraining. The only way to really learn is to test out breaking them 🙂

    As for this cake – beautiful in every way. I can almost smell it through the screen!

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  9. You are SO singing my song whenever you add pumpkin to anything. Breaking the rules…what IS it about breaking the rules that feels so good eh? I just spent the weekend in the city with my girls…culinary rule breaking? We threw the manual out the window! “What goes on in the city, stays in the city” is my new motto ;). I should feel awful as what I ate would make a food saint faint BUT I don’t. I feel satiated, I feel content and I feel complete. Sometimes you just need to remember that rules are there to stop us from putting our underpants on the outside and going to the shops. I personally think that sometimes we NEED to put our underpants on the outside (or wear pyjama’s till 3pm in the afternoon…”stays in the city!” 😉 ) in order to remember just why we make those rules in the first place. Love this pie cake. I have always loved dual purpose desserts as I can’t multi-task for the life of me so I like to make sure that my food does the double duty that I can’t. I am going to veganise this cake. Looks easy. I am going to probably eat about 5 slices of it and after the first 2 when that rule about “waistbands should most definitely be comfortable and not dig into your expanding girth” starts to make itself felt I will just go and get changed and put the kettle on for my pumpkin cake eating marathon. Life wasn’t meant to be easy but it WAS meant to be ours…this pumpkin cake shall be mine! 🙂

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      • Cheers for that Ms cityhippyfarmgirl. I like to check before bastardising other people’s recipes. You never know when they might get a bit techy about their great aunt mergatroydes cake recipe being “rooned” by a crazy hippy with a dairy and egg phobia 😉

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  10. Breaking the rules and a cake that tastes like pie, huh? I’ve got some pumpkin that needs to be used in my fridge – this may be what it gets transformed into. Did your kids like it?

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  16. In order to break them- you have to have them first! I am a bad one for not following rules- and sometimes it even works out well! 🙂 I like a cake that tastes like pie- putting this recipe front and center for pumpkin harvest time!

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