pumpkin cake

My mother loved to bake. And I loved to eat what she baked. Most of it. Unless it was a new recipe she was trying out that involved vegetables. Or fruit disguised as vegetables. Because as far as I was concerned, baked goods and vegetables simply did not belong together.  In my world, there would be no zucchini bread.  No carrot cake.  And certainly no pumpkin cake.  It just wasn't natural.

Eventually, I relaxed this iron-clad rule.  Thanks to my mother's pumpkin cake.  Because as revolted as I was by the idea of it, I could not resist the aroma of this freshly baked dessert.  And it served as a gateway to other vegetable-based cakes.

So when I found the recipe in an old collection recently, I thought, why not try to re-capture those early pumpkin memories?  Most of my early pumpkin memories are of the plastic variety; it would be nice to revisit a truly organic one.  I silently forgave my mother for her misspelling of "pumkin" in the recipe, and I set to work.  With my personal contribution of chocolate chips.  Because there are few things in this world that can't be improved upon by the addition of chocolate.

Naturally, my pumpkin cake did not turn out as incredibly delicious as my mother's. Likely because she might have made modifications as she went along that were not included in the recipe.  As I will make some modifications next time.  Most notably, I'll use butter instead of oil.  And I will double, or perhaps triple, the amounts of the spices.  The cinnamon and cloves were woefully under-represented.  The chocolate chips, however, were perfect.  No modification required.