For Thanksgiving this year, I received an order for a pumpkin cake, like the one I did a couple years ago.

This one was a pumpkin walnut spice cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting on the inside and plain cream cheese frosting on the outside. The stem and leaves were made of marzipan. It was somewhat like a carrot cake — but with pumpkin instead.

I used fresh pumpkins that I bought at Eastern Market in DC to make the puree used in the cake, and since I had leftover puree, I took the opportunity to make a pumpkin pie and pumpkin walnut ring with chocolate drizzle (recipe from The Cake Bible) for my family Thanksgiving:

The pumpkin walnut ring was basically the same recipe as the cake above. However, in order to differentiate it from the pumpkin pie in terms of flavor, I omitted the spices in the cake. It ended up a bit similar to a banana bread as a result. Very interesting — and very yummy!