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Chocolate Pumpkin Snack Cake

This cake takes me back to a cake-mix fad while I was growing up: snack cakes. The idea was that Mom whipped up unfrosted cakes for the kids to eat when they came home from school. Since it's not frosted, you can tuck a piece of Chocolate Pumpkin Snack Cake into a lunch box or picnic basket as tidily as you can serve it as a dessert after dinner.

Unlike a mix, this healthy recipe uses whole-wheat flour and pumpkin puree made from a Halloween pumpkin. The result is light and tender, with a good cocoa flavor and just a faint hint of spiciness from the pumpkin.

Active time: 15 minutes. Total time: about an hour. Makes 9 servings.

Ingredients

1 cup white whole-wheat flour (120 grams)
1/3 cup cocoa (30 grams)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

8 tablespoons butter, room temperature (one stick)
1 cup sugar (200 grams)
2 eggs
2/3 cup pumpkin puree or canned plain pumpkin (140 grams)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift or whisk together dry ingredients (flour, cocoa, salt, and baking soda) onto a piece of waxed paper or in a small bowl.
2. Put butter and sugar in a mixing bowl, then cream together using a mixer on medium speed. Use butter wrapper to butter or grease an 8-by-8-inch pan. Add eggs to butter mixture and beat until light in color. Mix in pumpkin, then mix in dry ingredients.
3. Spread batter in pan. Bake at 350 for 45 to 50 minutes, until a toothpick or other tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
4. Let cool for at least ten minutes. Store any extra covered at room temperature or wrapped well and frozen.

Tips and notes

• Pumpkins grown to be Jack-o'-Lanterns are not grown for taste, so often the puree from them is mild and somewhat watery. But the pumpkin puree works fine in this snack cake, creating a tender texture and adding nutrition without overwhelming the cocoa.
• I keep my sifter in a gallon ziplock bag along with a piece of waxed paper. I sift ingredients onto the waxed paper, shake it clean, and fold it up to store it with the sifter. For the most part, the ingredients you sift are similar enough that there is no need to wash the sifter or use fresh waxed paper each time.