Halloween Baking

I love when a new season starts and a whole new array of food is available to cook. Being a baker there are lots of cakes that you make for a particular occasion and a lot of these fit in with seasonal food. And so we have Halloween, ghosts and ghouls, fancy dress party's and pumpkins. Not only do you have the delights of pumpkin and/or squash in a savoury way there are also lots of cakes to be made.
Last year I bought some of the tinned pumpkin that is used in the US to make the traditional thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie. I figured that Whole Foods would stock it and I was right, they had a whole wall made out of Libbys Pumpkin. I had just bought the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook and they had a recipe for Pumpkin cupcakes. I made them and brought them into work and we had a lovely Halloween afternoon tea. So I decided that I had started a tradition and that I should do something again this year (any excuse!).
After another trip to Whole Foods (the High Street Ken one is a nice walk through the park away from work) I looked to the Google machine for inspiration. I fancied doing a loaf, mostly because it is easier to transport but also because they are usually very easy. I found a recipe for a Pumpkin, Lemon and Poppy Seed loaf and decided that was the one. This recipe called for roasting pumpkin and then pureeing it but I was way ahead with my Libbys. It was very easy, the most fiddly thing was processing the flour and butter to make a fine crumb but it was hardly hard work!
Now the other reason I wanted to do a loaf based cake was that I had bought some greaseproof paper lining cases for a loaf tin last week in John Lewis. I have seen these in various places in the last few years but never bought any and thought I would give them a try. Let me tell you I will be going back for the other versions because these are genius. No more greasing and lining you tin, all you do is plonk this in the tin, fill with cake mixture, bake and remove. And the cakes look shop bought! Why haven't I been using these for the last few years! Madness. I duly lined my tin and filled with cake mix (ok, the first attempt went a bit wrong, liner collapse, say no more) and it was so easy to remove, love these. The cakes looked great and smelled of nutmeg and mixed spice, autumn in your kitchen.
I decided I would make a frosting for one and leave the other as Delicious magazine intended. I used cream cheese and icing sugar with a bit of lemon zest (1oz cream cheese to 6oz icing sugar, a helpful recipe from a friend) and transported it to work with the cakes and iced it just before serving. They went down well and there was some leftover for breakfast the next day! Sorry, no photo this time, I forgot. You will have to take my word for it that they looked damned fine.