On A Roll

 

Photo Credit:  Lahoma McMillion

 

Aren’t those candy turkeys adorable?  Fellow writer Lahoma McMillion made them. She said it took her six hours to make thirty of them. The Awesome Thanksgiving Mom Award goes to Lahoma!  Are you making something special for our national feast day?  I did not go to Lahoma’s lengths, but I am preparing to host the traditional meal at my house. I don’t like to waste time cooking. By nature I think I’m the person who should be coming to your house for the holiday, but since that never happens (hint), I have to suck it up and cook and bake. And this is how it goes.

There is an entire cupboard devoted to random recipes and I root until I find the pumpkin roll recipe. I lose interest right about here and start calling people to chat while I work, while piling ingredients on the counter. Pumpkin Rolls require tea towels with lots of powdered sugar sifted onto them. I like this recipe, very messy. It also involves chopping nuts, again, hugely messy. It even involves lining cookie sheets with waxed paper, then vegetable oil and flour. Awesome stuff.

 

Since this will involve a mess that might require me to move afterwards, I decide to make four pumpkin rolls. Now it involves fractions. So I get off the phone and realize that I am one egg short – and I don’t mean metaphorically. I call a neighbor and ask for an egg, drive to her house (I live in the country) and pick up the egg, she thinks it is funny. Back home I mix the batter and get back on the phone. While on the phone, I pour the batter into the prepared cookie pans. It looks too thin. Shoot – I forgot to add the flour mixture. Multi-tasking has never been my thing, I get off the phone. Using a spatula I scrape it back into the mixing bowl and add the flour and do it again, without redoing the waxed paper. As mentioned previously, I lost interest in this – well, technically before I even started it. So I’ll take my chances, besides now I’m checking out YouTube videos (Did you see Dumb Ways to Die? I hope I never do any of those). I bake the cake, which is the shell of the pumpkin roll. While it is baking I mix up the filling. This involves sifted powdered sugar (Baking Tip:  Easily done over a large measuring cup with a small wire strainer and an egg beater – now I’m on Facebook), real butter, cream cheese, and real vanilla. Since I’m into healthy eating, I mix myself up a spinach smoothie for lunch. To even out the healthiness, I lick the beater with icing on it.

All this awesome baking has attracted the attention of my friendly neighborhood giant, Zeus. The pumpkin cakes smell wonderful as I take them out of the oven, and Zeus comes into the kitchen and plops down on a chair. He leans his giant head on his giant hand and checks out the powdered sugar all over the counter and tea towels. “What are you doing?” he asks. I cross the kitchen with the cookie sheets, and warn briefly, “You might not want to sit there.”  Then I thump the cakes onto two of the tea towels. A cloud of powdered sugar goes FOOF all over Zeus. He takes it like the big manly giant he is, and says, “You did that on purpose.” “Yes,” I admit. Let’s face it, if Zeus wanted to grind my bones to make his bread, he’d have done it long ago. I’m starting to like this baking stuff.

You peel the waxed paper off. Then roll up the tea towel, and place the cakes on a wire rack to cool.  After it is cooled, you unroll and toss the sugary nutty tea towels into the sink scattering both as you go. Now you spread the icing evenly.

Then just roll it up again. Then you cool it in the refrigerator a bit, until it firms. After that you cut the ends off, to make the roll look prettier, and you give the ends to your giant as a peace offering. To eat you slice it neatly. It really is yum. Recipe below if you like to make huge baking messes and would like to make your own!

Will you be feeding any giants this holiday season?  Or perhaps a horde of beloved friends and family?  Share your baking trials and tribulation (or epic fails) with The Glitter Globe. The best story will get an Epic Slinky Dog. (Just follow my blog and leave a comment below.)

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Pumpkin Roll
Cake:
Powdered sugar
¾ cup all-purpose flour
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. ground cinnamon
½ tsp. ground cloves
¼ tsp. salt
3 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup canned (or cooked fresh) pumpkin
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Filling:
1 package (8 oz.) cream cheese, softened
1 cup sifted powdered sugar
6 Tbsp. butter, softened
1 ½ tsp. real vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375F. Grease 15x10-inch jelly-roll (or cookie tray). Line with wax paper. Grease and flour paper. Sprinkle a thin, cotton kitchen towel with powdered sugar. (Use a wire strainer to do this, easiest.)

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and salt in small bowl. Beat eggs and sugar in large mixer bowl until thick. Beat in pumpkin. Stir in flour mixture. Spread evenly into prepared pan. Sprinkle with chopped walnuts.

Bake for 13-15 minutes or until top of cake springs back when touched (and isn’t sticky). Turn cake onto prepared towel. Carefully peel off waxed paper and roll cake and towel up together (starting at narrow end). Cool on a wire rack.

For filling beat cream cheese, powdered sugar, butter, and vanilla extract in small mixer bowl until smooth. Carefully unroll cake, remove towel. Spread mixture over cake evenly (to edges). Reroll cake. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least one hour. (Double wrap in foil to freeze, freezes well.)  Slice to serve.