The cake that almost got away . . .

 

 

This is "Great Aunt Helen's Pumpkin Cake." Now, Great Aunt Helen wasn't MY aunt, but that's the name of the recipe! I found it in the San Jose Mercury Newspaper in 2002 and I've made it every year since then. I don't really like how pumpkin pie feels in my mouth, so this cake was a great way to have the flavor without the texture.

You've already heard about the frosting incident at the Beijing airport. That was escape attempt #1.

It took me two days to make this cake. My oven is not a standard size oven that can hold two cake layers at a time . . . it's barely bigger than a toaster oven and can only hold one layer at a time. Each layer takes 30 minutes to bake, so the baking time alone is two hours.

I started on Friday and finished on Saturday. Cake had to be completely cool before frosting. Not that difficult. While it was cooling, I made southern cornbread dressing (completely with bacon and chicken), macaroni salad and some rice krispy treats. A potluck with 35 other people takes a lot of food! (Plus, I don't cook very often, so I take advantage of it whenever I can!) All this cooking is on one induction burner and that little oven!

I frosted the cake and stood back to admire it. I took pictures. I packed up all the food, along with the two carafes of coffe and off we went. I was very carefully carrying the cake with a large plastic trash bag over it (with toothpicks stuck in the cake to prevent plastic "stickage"). My family and I carefully got into the taxi.

Taxis are NOT known for their cautiousness in driving. In fact, the opposite is true. We had to go two miles and those two miles were among the most insanely driven two miles I had ever been on. The cake literally was sliding all over itself . . . escape #2! I pretty much plastered my hand to one side of it to keep it from toppling over. I walked into our friend's apartment without removing my hand from the impromptu rescue. I then placed the whole mess on a table, got a knife and went to work.

The repair job was decent and everyone enjoyed seeing a four-layer cake on the desert table. Considering that there were also three pumpkin pies, one apple pie, one chocolate cake, the rice krispies AND the pumpkin cake, I was pretty amazed that half of the cake was gone. We served the other half at sundae club and it completely disappeared.

(Art made sure he got some. Last year, I made a two-layer version and Art waited too late and it was gone before he got any. This year, he ate desert first! I only make this cake once a year so he wants to make sure he can enjoy it!)