A Pumpkin Spice Bundt Cake Worthy of Any Friendsgiving

I've read a lot lately about Friendsgivings -- you know, Thanksgiving that is celebrated with your friends. I thought it kind of interesting, because for at least the past five years, that's exactly what my Thanksgivings have been. I went to college in Wisconsin, far away from my home in Maryland, so it never seemed to make sense to fly home for the holiday when I'd be returning just a few weeks later for winter break. During those years, I'd go to my aunt and uncle's in Minnesota, but Thanksgiving never seemed like a big, important holiday then. I don't think we made a big to-do about it, and I was mostly thankful to catch up on sleep. 

And then the next two were spent in Taiwan. They were big elaborate occasions, hosted for us by the U.S. representative to Taiwan. Believe it or not, that was the first time I ever tried green been casserole and I loved it! It's funny to see each family's version of staple dishes. I don't ever remember having green bean casserole, but when I was little I do remember the very pretty white dish that was creamed pearl onions (I never touched it, because even though it was pretty, what kid under the age of 12 wants to eat a whole bunch of onions in a cream sauce?). Anyway, at the Thanksgiving hosted by the director of the American Institute in Taiwan, all of the Fulbright ETAs gathered around a low coffee table and ate our dinner while sitting on the floor, laughing and joking, feeling very thankful that we could have such a healthy dose of home so far away. We went around and said what we were thankful for, a tradition I've always liked, and I think it was a really special time for all of us. 

When I started graduate school in Indiana, I was back to not wanting to travel home for Thanksgiving since I'd be making the long drive back just a few weeks later. At the time, my good friend Andrea wasn't much into cooking and I lived (and still do) in my tiny apartment that literally has zero counter space, so we decided to work together and host our own Thanksgiving at her condo. We invited a lot of our Chinese friends who didn't have other plans, and it was a very merry event. That was the first turkey I ever made! 

The following year Mer had started graduated school in Boston, so I made the trip out there to host a Thanksgiving with her. We made all sorts of delicious veggie-friendly dishes: sweet potato casserole, a squash bake, roasted brussel sprouts with pomegranate and a vanilla pecan butter, homemade green bean casserole (so much better because of the crunch), mashed potatoes, dressing, and about three desserts including pumpkin crunch cake and chocolate bourbon pecan pie. We picked up some flowers on the way home from our morning jog, arranged them, set the table, and dined with friends in style. It was a veggie feast! That was also my first trip to Boston and I completely fell in love it; who wouldn't at Christmas time? It was probably the best trip I've ever had. But trips to visit best friends are always wonderful. 

Then last Thanksgiving I jetted off to NYC to reunite with Shana. Shana and I were both Fulbright ETAs and housemates, and she was by far my closest friend in the group. We'd go shopping together on the streets of Taiwan, I would do a lot of the talking, and the clerks would always respond to her (and even give her my change!). Shana's parents are both Taiwanese, and I clearly do not look Asian at all, so we were used to having to explain that we were both American and could both speak Chinese. We bonded over our love for Chinese culture, good food, and romance. And when Chinese New Year arrived, we decided to travel to Japan and Australia together. It had been three years since I'd seen her when I arrived in NYC last Thanksgiving, but everything felt the same. It didn't even occur to me that it was our first time seeing each other in the States. We ran all over the city, shopping at holiday markets, meeting up with friends, touring museums, seeing Mary Poppins on Broadway, and cooking Thanksgiving dinner with her roommates. I had a minor case of whooping cough (no big deal), but the trip was still stellar. 

So thinking about the term "Friendsgiving" and reflecting on how I've spent my last few Thanksgivings, I realize that the significance of the holiday, for me, stems from coming together with friends and creating your own sense of family. It seems to me that people get caught up in the obligatory events that seem to come with many holidays and forget to really enjoy them. I actually love tradition, and I understand wanting to preserve it, but I think it's worth thinking about what the holidays mean to you and how you want to celebrate them. Many of the Friendsgivings I've heard about this year are taking place in addition to family plans. So go make your rounds to relatives, but make sure you spend time reflecting and giving thanks for the things and people who are important to you, even if they're not part of your traditional family. 

Which brings us to this Thanksgiving. Mike and I are driving from PA and IN respectively to Michigan to spend Thanksgiving with his family! It'll be my first time meeting his sister, a very long-awaited moment, and her fiance, plus a lot extended family. Their family tradition involves eating Thanksgiving dinner at a German family-style restaurant in Frankenmuth, which happens to be home to the world's largest Christmas store! I stocked up on Christmas ornaments when we made our first trip there back in May, but I can't wait to see it all decked out for the actual holiday season. His mom has got dessert covered with three (three!) pies, but Mike and I will be making this pumpkin spice bunt cake for dessert the following day at his aunt and uncles. I've made this cake twice in the past month for two separate dinner events, and it was a huge HUGE hit. It's not too sweet so you could probably serve it for a special breakfast if you'd like. 

Pumpkin Bundt Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

From My Baking Addiction 

For the cake

2 1/4 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

3 large eggs

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking soda

2 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (I nearly double this)

1/2 tsp salt

1 15 oz-can pumpkin puree

For the frosting

4 oz cream cheese, softened

1 tbsp unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted

1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 tbsp milk

1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice (optional)

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 10-inch bundt pant with nonstick cooking spray. 

In a large bowl, combine sugar and oil with mixer until thoroughly blended. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice, and salt. Add flour mixture to egg mixture alternately with pumpkin, beating well after each addition. 

Transfer batter to prepared bundt pan. Bake in preheated oven for 60-65 minutes or until toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes before inverting onto a wire rack. Remove pan and cool completely before preparing cream cheese frosting (I've found that you can add the frosting to a slightly warm cake if you make it a bit thicker). 

For the cream cheese frosting: in a medium bowl, combine cream cheese and butter with a mixer until well-combined and fluffy- about 2 minutes. Gradually add in confectioners' sugar. Once the sugar is completely incorporated, mix on medium speed for 2 minutes. Mix in vanilla and milk. If frosting appears to be too thick, slowly add in a little more milk until you reach the desired consistency. If desired, add pumpkin spice and mix until well-combined. Spoon over cooled cake. 

Refrigerate any leftovers (up to three days). Bring up to room temperature before serving. 

Introducing: Mike's Corner!

Sometimes, you just need to be really productive. And, sometimes, being productive means clearing your sink of its dishes, doing a few loads of laundry, organizing your closet, going through your mail, and cooking yourself some yummy meals. That's what happened last Thursday; it was wonderful. The day hit a high when I received a surprise bouquet from my beau! It was a pretty good day. 

And last week I cooked up a storm! I made delicious baked sandwiches, french onion soup, and a pumpkin spice bunt cake! It was the perfect marriage of deliciously fall foods. And I felt like a big girl when I asked the boys at the deli counter to slice my block of cheese that I picked up in the "specialty cheese" section and they honored my special request! After all, a perfect layer of uniformly golden, bubbly gruyere is must have for any respectable french onion soup! 

So I ate a lot of cheese this past week. Gruyere, cream cheese, Kraft singles on my egg and cheese breakfast bagels (I won't judge you if you won't judge me). And just in case I hadn't hit my maximum cheese intake this week, I had a grilled cheese for brunch! It wasn't planned, you see. The Bloomington Handmade Market was today, and I'm a sucker for cute, thoughtful Christmas gifts. So I headed over after my Bollywood dancefit class, and saw The Big Cheeze Food Truck! I couldn't resist. I don't think I've ever gotten to eat anything from a food truck! But it's okay because my cheese was served with some chicken and bacon...and ranch. So it was well-balanced...right?

Now, I'm a fan of good food, both in terms of taste and quality, and I like to use fresh, seasonal, and mostly nutritious ingredients. But, I also love my carbs and sweets. And cheese! So I'm not much of a calorie counter. I just try to supplement my "good" eating with some exercise and am happy to indulge in ice cream and the occasional doughnut when the need arises (I may have indulged a bit too much in Lancaster...I think I had 4 doughnuts in a week!)

So, now's the perfect time to bring in Mike. He's a bit more...balanced in the food department. Within our first few months of dating he complained that he'd had more dessert than in the past few years (we'd only had dessert together six times, six!). This will be the first of his "Mike's Corner" posts, and I promise I'll be back with that sinfully delicious pumpkin spice bunt cake recipe! Pumpkin is nutritional, no?

Mike’s Corner: Reflections on a Vegetarian Diet

Since I make the occasional cameo in Nicki’s posts on here, she suggested that I pull my weight and contribute a post of my own. This blog’s culinary theme is right there in its title, so I’ll introduce myself by talking about some of the ways in which I think about my own diet, and I’ll conclude with two versions of my favorite recipe.

            I’m approaching my second anniversary as a vegetarian. I don’t remember the exact date when I decided to stop eating meat, but it was very soon after Thanksgiving 2011. I still have a hard time articulating exactly why I made this decision. Part of it had to do with my increasing awareness of the damaging economic and environmental effects of industrial farming. My own health and family medical history was a factor as well. Although I’m a philosophy professor, the philosophical work on animal rights was not much of an influence, although to explain why would take too many words for this post. (Maybe next time.)

            In any case, for the past two years, I’ve abstained almost entirely from both meat and fish. (I’ve eaten fish on a couple of occasions when there was no other option, and chicken once at an event that had no veggie or fish options.) As a result, I’ve had to pay close attention to my diet. This is because I’m an avid weightlifter, and this imposes nutritional demands on my body that go beyond what is required for ordinary healthy subsistence.

            In particular, protein is extremely important for anybody engaged in regular intense exercise. It’s especially important for anybody who does strength training. One word that shows up a lot in weightlifting circles is ‘overtraining’. This condition occurs when the body is worked beyond the point where it can recover and rebuild normally. One way to overtrain is to work out too much without allowing for sufficient time between trips to the gym, but another way is to withhold what the body needs to rebuild the muscle fibers that get broken down by lifting weights. In order to do this rebuilding, the body needs protein above all.

            Of course, when most people think of protein, they think first of meat and fish. This becomes very apparent if you watch a lot of cooking shows on TV, like I do. In the culinary use, the word ‘protein’ has a precise meaning that doesn’t correspond to its nutritional one. It seems to be used to refer to meat and fish only. (In a way, the word ‘fruit’ is similar. A tomato meets all of the biological criteria of a fruit, but in the kitchen, tomatoes are vegetables.) So, since I don’t eat these, I’ve had to work to develop a vegetarian diet that provides me with enough of the protein (in the nutritional sense) that I need.

            There are a lot of protein supplements out there, and I do make use of those. A lot of them are dairy-based, but since I haven’t gone fully vegan, I don’t shy away from them. (There are vegan protein supplements, and I have tried them. For a variety of reasons, however, the dairy-based ones are better.) I typically get between 50 and 100 grams of protein per day from shakes that I mix. For my level of activity at the gym, however, that isn’t enough, and the rest has to come from food.

            I have a number of high-protein vegetarian recipes stashed away. One of my favorites combines two of the best plant-based protein sources: beans and quinoa. I’m sure that beans are quite familiar to you. Quinoa may be too, since it’s been a fad over the past couple of years. It’s one of the best plant-based sources of protein around, and it can be used in a lot of recipes. I tend to used it in place of rice a lot, including in the recipe below. There has been some controversy about the economic effects that quinoa’s increasing popularity might have on the farmers in South America who cultivate it, but this appears to be much less of a problem than some initial reports about it suggested. So, I’ve felt comfortable continuing to cook with it a lot.

            The recipe below actually comes it two varieties: a play on Cajun-style rice and beans and an Indian curried-chickpea style. I’ve provided the recipe for the Cajun version; below it, you’ll find the modifications to use if you want to make the Indian version. Keep in mind that I like my food to pack a punch, so be sure to decrease the amount of chili sauce and cayenne pepper if you like things milder.

Cajun-style quinoa-and-beans

4 cups low-sodium vegetable stock or broth

2 cups uncooked quinoa

2 cans low-sodium black beans, rinsed and drained

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

1 medium green bell pepper, seeded and chopped

2 celery stalks, chopped

6 cloves garlic, minced

1 tbsp. ground cumin

2 tsp. cayenne pepper

2 tsp. Louisiana-style hot sauce

1 tbsp. salt

½ tbsp. black pepper

1 cup frozen green peas

Canola oil

Heat a bit of oil in a large pot. Sauté bell pepper, onion, and celery until soft (about 12 minutes).

Add garlic, sauté everything one more minute

Add quinoa, cayenne pepper, and cumin, and stir until the spices coat everything

Add stock, hot sauce, salt, and black pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes.

Stir in peas, cover again, and simmer 5 more minutes.

Add beans, stir everything together, and cover for a few minutes to let the flavors mix.

For the Indian version, make these changes:

- Replace the black beans with chickpeas

- Replace the cumin and cayenne pepper with 1 tbsp. curry powder

- Add 2 tsp. minced fresh ginger (sauté with the garlic)

- Replace Louisiana-style hot sauce with sambal ulek (an Indonesian chili sauce) or Sriracha, and use at least 1 tbsp.