Olla-Podrida: easy cake recipe

Showing posts with label easy cake recipe. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Pumpkin Toffee Dream Cake

Last month I reviewed Easy Everyday by Jessica Merchant (you can read my review here). Ever since then I’ve been thinking about trying her famous Pumpkin Toffee Dream Cake. Who cares if it’s almost summer? Pumpkin spice knows no season, and this cake proves it! Merchant notes this is her most celebrated recipe, lightly spiced for broad appeal, but I’m a spice enthusiast, so I amped it up with a heaping tablespoon of pumpkin pie spice. The result? Pure magic.

What I loved about this recipe is how simple it is. Baking in a 9x13-inch pan was a refreshing change from my usual multi-layer cakes—less fuss, just as delicious. The cake is fluffy, tender, and perfectly balanced with a decadent toffee-topped cream cheese frosting. Don’t wait for fall to bake this gem—it’s a year-round winner. Trust me, you’ll want a slice (or three)!

Pumpkin Toffee Dream Cake

2 c. flour
2 t. baking soda
1½ t. ground cinnamon
½ t. kosher salt
¼ t. freshly grated nutmeg
1 15-oz. can pumpkin puree
1¾ c. packed brown sugar
½ c. plain Greek yogurt
½ c. vegetable oil
4 large eggs
2 t. vanilla extract
Optional: ½–1 t. extra pumpkin pie spice for bolder flavor

Toffee Cream Cheese Frosting:
8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
½ c. (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2½ c. confectioners’ sugar
2 t. vanilla extract
⅓ c. shaved milk chocolate curls, for topping
⅓ c. toffee bits, for topping

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x13-inch baking dish with nonstick baking spray.

In a large bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg, and optional extra spice.

In another bowl, whisk pumpkin puree, brown sugar, yogurt, and oil until smooth. Add eggs one at a time, then vanilla. Combine wet and dry ingredients, mixing until no large lumps remain.

Pour batter into the prepared dish. Bake for 30–35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely.

Frosting: Beat cream cheese and butter until creamy. Add confectioners’ sugar and beat until smooth, about 2–3 minutes. Mix in vanilla. Spread over cooled cake. Top with chocolate curls and toffee bits. Refrigerate cake or leftovers; it keeps for up to a week.

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Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Strawberry Dream Cake

Generally speaking, I am not a fruit and cake person. The thought of pineapple upside down cake makes my stomach lurch. I cannot even be in the same room, I take that back, the same building, in which it is being baked. That does not hold for the strawberry beauty right here. My aunt has been making this cake since the 70s. It is so good that I make it the exception to my “I hate cake and fruit” rule, and gobble it up. It is so simple that you can put it together in no time. Most people who try it want the recipe. Yes, it tends to be a summer dessert, but I think it works anytime of the year.

Strawberry Dream Cake

1 14.25-oz. pkg. white cake mix

¼ t. almond extract
2 c. heavy whipping cream
1 7.2-oz. box Betty Crocker Fluffy White Frosting Mix
1 qt. strawberries, sliced

Preheat oven to 350° F. Spray a 9” x 13” pan with Baker’s Joy; set aside. Place a medium mixing bowl and a pair of beaters into the refrigerator.

Prepare cake according to package direction for a 9” x 13” pan; stir in almond flavoring. When cake has baked, remove from the oven to a wire rack and let it cool completely.

Remove your pre-chilled bowl and beaters from the refrigerator. Pour in frosting mix and heavy cream, and beat until stiff peaks form. Fold in the fresh strawberries, turn out onto the cooled cake, and spread to the edges. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

This keeps in the refrigerator for up to three days, and can also be frozen with success.

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Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Rum Cake

I spend a lot of time thinking about food, probably much more than I should. Largely, when I’m not thinking about recipes to invent, I’m thinking about the food that I enjoyed back in the old days when I did none of the cooking and all of the eating. Last week, for whatever reason, I found myself thinking about my mother’s Rum Cake. I didn’t appreciate this nearly enough when I was a kid. Back then, cake was not cake unless it had icing, lots and lots of icing. These days I appreciate a simple cake that is light on topping, but big on taste. Wondering if the Rum Cake was nearly as good as I'd remembered, I decided that I must make it, and started digging through one of my favorite possessions, my mother’s recipe box. I searched recipe by recipe, TWICE, to no avail. I did find a lot that I plan to try, but no Rum Cake. It was distressing.

Two days later, when I was talking to my dad, he mentioned that he'd found a piece of paper in the bread box when he reached for the package of sandwich buns in order to make himself a nice ham and swiss. Now, he has been using this bread box for nearly three years since mother passed away, and had never seen this slip of paper. When I asked him what it was, he said that he had set it aside for me because he thought I might want to have a look at it. You guessed it, it was the recipe for Rum Cake. (Cue the spooky music.) It is not often that I am rendered speechless (really, ask anyone), but I was then. It was almost as if mother was helping me out here.

As it turned out, it was as good as I’d remembered. It is amazingly easy to make, and yields a tasty, booze-soaked, sinus-opening goodness that will have you craving it morning, noon, and night. (Not that I would recommend it in the morning because of the alcohol content, then again, on some days, I would, so use your own judgment.) Her recipe, exactly as dad found it, is below. The sizes of cake mixes and pudding mixes, alas, have been reduced. I had no problem using the current 16.5 ounce cake mix and 3-1/4 ounce instant pudding.