family, friends and cake = love!

I have been having the best time here! My days have been fabulously full of catching up with friends that I haven't seen since May OR since I was here last fall... eeee! It makes me wish I had a machine that would just zoom me here, so that I could visit and see my friends and family whenever I wanted. I arrived super early on Tuesday and spent the whole day with my sister Sarah, which was aaaaawesome... even though we ran errands and were kind of all over the place. Wednesday was more catch up time with friends (I love my friends I have the best friends) as was Thursday, and today has been ... yup! a bit more of that. I had time yesterday to bake a cake - to bring over to Hanno and Tally's house for dessert - and I'm finding time right now to make pumpkin loaf with the leftover puree from recipe #1. This is the only thing I've taken pictures of (woops), and it tastes even better than it looks. From the cover of Fine Cooking, here comes Brown Butter Pumpkin Layer Cake.... it was amazing! The cake was so good that I'm not sure that the cream cheese icing was completely necessary, so hence the loaf-with-topping trial today.



Steve arrives early tomorrow morning, and then we're heading over to the Sunshine Coast on an early afternoon ferry for a weekend of wedding festivities. A good friend of mine that I played volleyball with when I was 15 (Team BC) and then in my early 20s (Team Canada and Portugal) is getting married, and I'm so excited! I love love love weddings, and it will be so good to see her and her husband-to-be tie the knot AND to spend a solid weekend with a great crew of friends. Again, the zooming - zoom machine where are you? SO... that's all I've got for now. Besides the recipe of course...

Brown Butter Pumpkin Layer Cake (slightly adapted!)

3/4 cup butter - melted and cooled just a bit
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp ground ginger, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 1/2 cups sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup buttermilk

Topping:
1 1/2 tbs butter
2/3 cup pecans
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbs chopped crystallized ginger

For the cake: combine wet and dry ingredients separately (minus the butter) - mix the two together, adding the melted butter as you go. Bake at 350 in two 9 inch round cake pans for approx 28 minutes... or until tester comes out clean. For the topping: melt butter, add nuts, sugar and salt, and remove from heat once pumpkin seeds start popping a little. Add ginger and let cool! ICE the cake with your favourite cream cheese icing (I used this one), top with the topping and then... ENJOY!