I made this pumpkin pound cake with cinnamon glaze for a friend’s baby shower at work this week. There are several interesting pumpkin cake recipes floating around on the internet; I adapted this one from a pound cake recipe by Kay Prosonic on allrecipes.com, omitting the pecans from her recipe and using fresh pumpkin in place of canned. I opted for a cinnamon glaze instead of a rum flavor since I was cooking for a baby shower.
Bundt cakes are one of my favorite desserts for a potluck because they’re easy to make ahead, they travel well and they feed a lot of people. I also like how easy they are to decorate. Baking with a bundt pan is not difficult, but it can be a little intimidating if you’re not familiar with the proper technique for greasing the pan and removing the finished cake. The best instructional resource I have found is this series of videos by a bakeware company on YouTube.
Pumpkin Bundt Cake
1 1/4 cups shortening
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
4 eggs
2 cups roasted, pureed pumpkin or 1, 15 oz. can solid pack pumpkin
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
Cinnamon Glaze
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons milk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees; grease and flour a 10-inch bundt pan. An electric mixer is helpful, but not mandatory for this recipe. Mix shortening and sugars in a large bowl until creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add pumpkin and mix until fully combined. In a separate bowl, combine flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, allspice and ginger. Add to the creamed mixture and mix until just combined.
Pour into prepared bundt pan and bake for 60-65 minutes until a wooden skewer or cake tester inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes. Remove cake from pan by placing a wire rack on top of the bundt pan and inverting the cake onto the rack.
For glaze, sift the powdered sugar and cinnamon into a small bowl. Stir in milk until combined. Drizzle over cooled cake. My favorite method for drizzling is to pour the glaze into a ziploc bag, snip off a bottom corner, and use the ziploc like a piping bag to drizzle the glaze all over the cake.
Click here for a printable copy of this recipe.
