Since getting lectured about not blogging for a while, I’ve started to stop and take time to snap a few hideous pictures of the stuff I make. Including all the pumpkin stuff I’ve been making. Even if they are terrible pictures taken with my phone. Deal with it.

Pumpkin spice scones. They were good but the texture was definitely more cakey than sconey and therefore I will not share the recipe with you. I’ll find a better one! 

Pumpkin spice “timbits”! These were fantastic, recipe found here.

I know I know I know…pumpkin is all over the place at this time of year. Everywhere. Every single food blog will probably have a post or two involving pumpkin. If you’re tired of pumpkin then you should just probably stop reading this right now and go do something that’s less cool (cause my blog is obviously totally cool). But I don’t even care if you don’t like it..because I love it. Too much perhaps. Today after work I was hangin’ out with The Dog, tossin’ some toys around in the backyard.

All of a sudden he stops.

No interest in toys.

He stares at me.

Intently.

At first thought I almost shat my pants thinking there was a ghost behind me…but then I tuned into my dog-bond-senses and realized he was just trying to tell me to go in the house and bake something. Thanks Foster!

So that’s how we’re all here now. You reading this. Foster sleeping in the window sill.  Me probably off eating some cake somewhere.

While I believe this cake had great potential, I definitely screwed it up somewhere. It tasted pretty frigging awesome BUT it was realllllly dense and heavy and just would not bake properly. Probably because I forgot the leavening agent hahaha. Oh boy. Let this be a lesson girls and boys, don’t try to bake when you’re 4 bottles deep in some Highballer Pumpkin Ale (which is a tasty little beer from a local brewery here in Cambridge!). I’m still going to share the recipe with you folks because I think I might try it again and you should too.

Pumpkin Pecan Coffee Cake (Adapted from bhg.com)

cream cheese filling

2 eggs
1 brick of cream cheese (8oz), softened
2 T flour
1 t vanilla

cake

1/2 cup softened butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 t vanilla
2/3 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup buttermilk
3 cups flour
2 t baking powder
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t ground ginger
1/2 t nutmeg
1/2 t salt
1 cup chopped pecans

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350F and grease and line the bottom of an 8″ springform pan with parchment.

Mix together the cream cheese, sugar and flour. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until fully incorporated. Set aside.

For the cake, beat the sugar and butter until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time. Make sure you scrape down the bowl between additions. Add the vanilla and pumpkin. In a separate bowl mix all the dry ingredients together. Add the dry ingredients and the buttermilk alternately to the butter/sugar mixture.

Spread half of the cake batter into the pan. Top with most of the cream cheese mixture (like three quarters of it) and sort of swirl it around a bit. Sprinkle most (let’s go with three quarters again) of the pecans on top. Spoon the rest of the cake batter on top and attempt to sort of spread it around to cover the cream cheese. Spoon what’s left of the cream cheese mixture into dollops and swirl them around a bit again. Top the the remaining pecans.

Bake this bitch for like 40-50 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Allow to cool!

If you’re really rad you can make some caramel to drizzle on top of this beast. That would be good.