All things pumpkin

In the span of a week we have made (and eaten) three pumpkin-containing, baked goods. The first was an easy pumpkin muffin kit that was dessert after dinner and breakfast the next morning. The second was a pumpkin pie. Why pumpkin pie already? Well, because Matthew came home from school with a paper saying it was his favorite fall dessert. What does a mother do when you learn your child's favorite fall dessert? Make it, of course.

I also had the realization that our oldest child, Jacob, is a mere 7 years from the flying the coop age and that means I have a very small window between the age of him wanting to be in the kitchen with me and learning to cook and then reaching the all-knowing, he-never-hears-a-word-I-say age, so I must get busy on teaching this child to cook. Where do we start on learning to cook? Dessert, of course. So Jacob and I made a pumpkin pie in the middle of last week, just because. I bet money on him making pumpkin pie early in his courtship in a few ahem, 20 years.

After hearing the jealousy rage in the house over Jacob making the pumpkin pie and listening to comments such as "why did you let him do it? why didn't you wait for me (or us)? that is so unfair!" it was quickly decided that another baked good containing pumpkin must be baked. Thankfully, I remembered a recipe that I made several times last year around this time that was delicious. Here is the recipe we made up thoroughly followed, more variations are listed below.

Pumpkin Spice Cake

1 box spice cake mix
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk
1 egg (actually, I was lazy and dumped in a bit of Egg Beaters)
1 15oz. can pumpkin

Mix this all together, either by a mixer or with a whisk (if you're trying to find toned arms under the flab, like me.) You can bake it in any kind of pan you'd like; we chose a bundt pan. Bake at 375 until you think it's done a tester inserted comes out clean. We put ours on a pretty cake stand to make it seem like it was a lot more work than it truly was and drizzled with some leftover vanilla tub frosting from the fridge homemade icing.

Variations:
-Add only 1 can of pumpkin to the cake mix; the batter is thick but it still turns out wonderfully. (This is actually the Weight Watchers recipe. We made it this way last year because I was on more of a diet kick...well, diet with a cake mix.)
-Add 1 cup of water instead of 1/2 water, 1/2 milk.
-Leave out the egg (or Egg Beaters) all together.
-Add applesauce instead of the eggs; maybe 1/4 cup or so.

Making it the way we did or making it with any of these variations will turn out about the same. Omitting the liquid will make it more muffin texture (which is our next "cooking lesson") and making it with more liquid and egg will make it more cake-like texture.