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Sea Salt Caramel Pumpkin Bundt Cake

Molly loves sea salt caramel and pumpkin, so of course I heard this recipe calling her name and decided to make it for her birthday! So, the test-kitchen blogger that I aspire to be, decided to tackle it under the pressure of a life event...

Let me first give a shoutout to my beloved online recipe book app yummly.com. I type in ingredients I want to use and it pulls up all kinds of options and allows you to customize your search. This recipe looked easy and fun and Molly was up for a surprise so here I go. 

I did use canned pumpkin for the puree and it worked out great. The cake was actually amazing - came out clean and moist (sour cream helped this). There was, however, an issue with the "caramel filling." The instructions explicitly say to keep the mixture from the edges of the pan. Ok. So when I did, it created this goup (see my pic) that stayed goupy when you cut into it. Also when you look at the picture in the recipe, obviously the filling/goup touched the edge of the pan which explains the dark ribbon around the cake. 🤷‍♀️ In addition to the clumpy goup (not to overuse the term), it called for 1/2 tsp of cloves! It clearly needed just 1/4, if that. The clove quotient added a bitterness that sharply interrupted the smoothness of the pumpkin cake. Sadly, it didn't resemble caramel at all. In faith, I did give caramel a leading role in the presentation by melting caramel baking bits and pouring it over the top then sprinkling course sea salt over it. So I'd like to think that helped. 

Everyone appreciated the effort and we all agreed about the clove overload. The consensus was next time to just leave out the filling altogether. Or, use less clove and spread it out more. I'd probably do the latter because I love a cake with a surprise inside!  All-in-all it was a great Birthday Celebration cake and another opportunity to try something new!


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