Whole Wheat Pumpkin Snack Cake

Whole wheat pumpkiny-goodness with just the right amount of sugar and spice.

Last year, I seriously overdid it on the pumpkin. Pumpkin lattes, pumpkin yogurt, pumpkin overnight oats, pumpkin Cheerios, pumpkin chili…you get the picture. This year, like a kid who understands the meaning of “too much birthday” or an adult who understands the penalty of having “too much fun,” for now, I’m easing into the pumpkin. Thank goodness for this simple, not-too-sweet, Whole Wheat Pumpkin Snack Cake.

I really do love pumpkin! So much in fact that the weeks before, during, and after Thanksgiving I allow myself to eat Crustless Pumpkin Pie (the topic of an upcoming blog) almost every day for breakfast.

So, last night at our local grocery store, while I wasn’t really thinking “pumpkin” yet, I stumbled across one of those hard-for-me-to-resist mini cookbooks titled (how straight forward can you get) Pumpkin!  Inside I found this quick-to-fix recipe and adapted it to make it lower in sodium, higher in fiber, a little less sweet, and a lot more nutty.

I made this Whole Wheat Pumpkin Snack Cake (while it rained, and rained and rained yesterday) for Mr. EN and me to snack on while we watched the Spartans ( Go Green!) play Minnesota, and for us to take to work next week for a midday energy boost. This recipe calls for an entire can of pumpkin so it’s loaded with Vitamin A  – which many of us don’t get enough of – and packed with fiber. We both really enjoyed it and I hope you do too. The cake is spicy, tender, and moist and the toasted walnuts and dried cranberries give it a hearty texture while adding depth to the the pumpkin-pie like flavor.

So, happy Sunday, happy fall, happy almost-holiday season, and happy pumpkin-eating! And, if you’re a pumpkin lover (and sometimes over-doer) like me, please heed my advice and promise to reign yourself in when you start to feel you’re reaching your pumpkin limit. There’s more than enough to go around.

Peace, love, and good eats; from our Empty Nest to yours.

Mr. EN’s Take on This Dish: “The first few bites, I thought this wasn’t sweet enough, but by the second piece I was sold. Try it with a little whipped cream or vanilla Greek yogurt.”

Trending in the EN Kitchen: King Arthur’s White Whole Wheat Flour, purchased at our local Meijer Store