Pinterest Day: Pumpkin Roll Up

As the seasons headed into fall, I found myself pinning a lot of pumpkin recipes.  Pumpkin flavored everything is one of the best things about fall!  For this Pinterest post I decided to try out two pumpkin recipes: a pumpkin roll from My Baking Addiction blog and a pumpkin bundt cake from Never Enough Thyme. 

Both recipes turned out awesome; so awesome in fact that we ate the bundt cake before I even got a picture of it!  Guess since I’m still new to blogging I haven’t yet gotten into the habit of photographing everything ;).

So, even though I don’t have a pic of my bundt cake, it turned out super yummy, very moist and light.  I definitely recommend trying it out.

The pumpkin roll I did take pictures of, because the process of making a roll is more involved than making a bundt cake.  This one also turned out really yummy, but mine wasn’t quite as pretty as the gal’s I got the recipe from.   Here’s mine:

You can get the recipe here, but I am going to show the steps so you can see how the process looks. 

I will also take a moment here to admit that I am something of a pumpkin purist.  Growing up, my mom always mashed up our Halloween pumpkins and turned them into glorious Thanksgiving pies.  I have always been able to taste the difference between a dessert that uses fresh pumpkin and canned pumpkin, and I always prefer the fresh.  So, every year I cook and mash up my Halloween pumpkins and turn it into my own glorious pies and breads and cookies. 

If you’ve never cooked with fresh pumpkin, I recommend it!  Try it and see what a great difference it makes!  Ok, done with my pumpkin preaching.  For your pleasure, here is a pic of my pumpkin mash, ready to be divvied up and frozen:

 

The pumpkin roll batter can be a little liquidy.  (It’s basically like pumpkin bread.)  After mixing all the ingredients you spread it evenly in a parchment lined jelly roll sheet.  I also sprayed the sheet underneath the parchment in case any batter seeped through it wouldn’t bake on.

 

After cooking you turn it out onto a floured dish cloth:

And roll it up:

Easy as that.  You let it completely cool before unrolling it.  Here’s where I had some trouble.  When I’ve made rolls before, I’ve rolled them up in parchment or wax paper, but the directions for this roll used a towel so I thought I’d try that out.  I didn’t have much luck:

 Yep, that’s a nice layer of my roll left behind on the towel.  Maybe I didn’t flour it enough, or maybe I should have sprayed it with oil as well.  If you try this yourself, make sure to really flour it up.  I think if I do this again I may just use the parchment paper like I’ve done before; I always get fine results with that.

When I unrolled it I got a hole or two, but I just kind of mushed it together and it held fine.  Then you just slather on that yummy cream cheese filling and roll it back up.  Refrigerate for a while and it’s ready to eat!

 

 

Mine doesn’t have a nice glossy top since it left it on the towel, but really, who cares how pretty it is when it tastes so yummy!

 

Hope you try it out yourself!