The pumpkin spree

Every fall my mother was baking a pie. First she rolled thin sheets of dough. Then she filled them with some orange mixture. She baked the pie and then... the big chase begun. My mother was employing every tutoring technique to make me try her pastry, even the notorious "try it and if you don't like it spit it out". Even though the pie smelled deliciously, that yellow substance looked creepy, so that it was difficult for me to give any credit to my mother's effort. The "creepy" filling was made of pumpkin, which is in season during fall.

It wasn't until I moved to the US that I experienced my first Halloween and I realized that the symbol of the festivities is the pumpkin. Spooky fact, while motherly care was not enough to convince me to try pumpkin, Halloween creepiness did.

First it was my neighbor, whose effort to apologize for the noise next door brought a pumpkin on my table as a peace offer. Not knowing what to do with this round vegetable I thought it might be a brilliant idea to bake a cake, incorporating some of the pumpkin in the batter. Pureeing the pumpkin was the easy part of the endeavor. The problem was that I had never baked a cake before. 

"Try a box cake!" suggested a friend and working mother of two adorable little devils.

And so I did. The result was so thrilling that it made me try pumpkin, and adore it. The puree of a freshly baked pumpkin gave the pastry such moist that it transformed a blunt box cake into a delight.

"Shame on you!" my mother cried when I bragged about my achievement over the phone. "A nice Greek girl should at least know how to bake something as simple as a cake" she continued. All of a sudden Halloween became even creepier. However, I never complained because I gained three valuable lessons from my first ever Halloween.

First, I learned to appreciate the earthy taste and the distinct aroma of a pumpkin. Second, my mother's howler was enough to motivate me to learn how to bake a cake from scratch, an effort that was encouraged by my roommate, who gave me an electric mixer and a bundt cake mold. Those gifts became valuable companions in my future baking efforts and stayed with me longer than my roommate. Third, I learned how to carve pumpkins with spooky themes, a fun activity that I continue until these days.

 

After that Halloween pumpkin cake baking spree took over my soul. I was baking constantly, experimenting with batters, baking techniques and spice mixes. The only ingredient stayed steady was the pumpkin. 

A few years later, in an outing my friend Cari announced that it was her birthday in a couple of weeks. "I'll make you a cake" I suggested firmly. I am not sure what series of thoughts was crossing my brain at that moment, but I was in serious trouble, as baking a birthday cake has never been my forte. As a matter of fact, the only cake I have ever baked was (surprise...) pumpkin cake. In the panic that had captured my body, I realized that perhaps that was the solution. 

The original Cari cake

So I baked a pumpkin cake, filled in with a simple cocoa whipped cream and decorated with chocolate syrup and a tealight candle on top. Perhaps that was not my brightest culinary moment, but it made Cari happy. Hence, the Cari cake was born!