Pumpkin Spice Cake

It's fall! And finally the return of one of my favorite foods....pumpkin!

People try to convince me that pumpkin and pumpkin foods are seasonal. I, for one, do not espouse this philosophy. In a perfect world, you'd be able to order pumpkin cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory whenever you wanted, or order pumpkin pancakes from Kerby Lane in June just as readily as you can in November. But alas.

Even buying a can of pumpkin at the Safeway down the street this week was complicated. It took FOREVER to find it. I had to ask several employees, and they all told me different aisles to look in. One of the cashiers even tried to convince me that canned pumpkin was seasonal. (Really?! Come on, that's why it's CANNED!) And that if I couldn't find it, it's because they didn't have it yet. (Um, hello! It's mid-October. Tis the season!) Finally as I was checking out, my cashier sent the bagger girl to go look for it and she came back to say that she'd found it, then asked with a sort of confused look, "Oh, did you want me to get you one?" Gah! YES! Meh. But I finally got it!

So first up for the fall pumkin season, is this pumpkin spice cake. And then it took me a few days to find the time to make it, but finally did tonight! So without further ado:

Pumpkin Spice Cake

Ingredients:

Cake

• 15 oz. canned pumpkin
• 1 package spice cake mix
• 1/2 c. unsweetened applesauce
• 3 eggs
• Pumpkin pie spice
• Cinnamon
  

Frosting

• 1 oz. cream cheese
• 1/2 c. powdered sugar
• 2-3 tsp milk
• 1 tsp vanilla

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350* F. Generously grease bundt pan.
2. In a large bowl, mix cake ingredients until well blended. Spread evenly into pan.
3. Bake for 40-50 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
4. As cake nears completion, blend together frosting mix until smooth.
5. Remove cake from oven and pan, placing on plate. Drizzle warm cake with frosting.

Notes:

• YUM!
• My drizzling job wasn't very pretty. I think my frosting may have been too thick because I was a bit...liberal...with my "ounce" of cream cheese.
  
• I didn't measure the spices, I just sort of sprinkled them in until I felt I had enough.
  
• I even used reduced fat cream cheese and it tasted fantastic.
  
• I wish I had more frosting to drizzle a bit more on my individual slice, but I ran out of vanilla so I couldn't make more.
• The original recipe said to make in a 9x13 pan and bake for 25-30 minutes, but since I made it in a bundt pan, that wasn't nearly enough time. The 40-50 minutes is an estimation. I lost track of how long I really cooked it for but it was somewhere around there.
  
• I found the frosting recipe on a different website and combined it with this cake, and the results were brilliant!
  
• This is super easy, and super yummy. The perfect cake!

Woo! Bring on fall!