Pumpkin Week: Pumpkin Roll

Sometimes, I don't follow recipes to the exact letter. I make substitutions if I'm missing an ingredient or I add a little sumthin sumthin if I think it will make the recipe even better. And sometimes, like in the case of the Fiery Arrabiata Sauce, I misread tsp as tbsp and almost burn my husband's tongue off. Hey, everyone makes mistakes.

Then, there are nights like last night. I was preparing today's recipe and realized I had neither butter nor wax paper. But, I had pumpkin butter so I subbed that instead. Good idea. It changed the color of the filling but it was still delicious. As for the lack of wax paper, I was too lazy to run to the grocery store for one thing and I decided to make it without wax paper, because, hey, I'm risky like that. Big mistake. My pumpkin roll ended up looking like this:

Just so everyone is clear on what a roll actually looks like, it should have looked like this:

Photo from Fashionably Foodie-check her out, she has some yummy recipes and photos and she can obviously follow directions and make a beautiful pumpkin roll.

I encountered just one problem when removing it from the pan: it cracked in half. I tried pushing the warm insides together with my fingers to seal the crack but it didn't work. I still attempted to roll it but I caused another crack. So I gave up and slathered on the filling and cut myself a slice to reward me for a job done badly.

It was good. It didn't even matter that it wasn't rolled right and the colors weren't perfect. Sometimes different is just fine.

Pumpkin Roll

Source: How Does She

Roll

1 cup sugar

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup flour

2/3 cup canned pumpkin

3 eggs

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/3 cup walnuts, optional

Filling

8 oz cream cheese

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup powdered sugar

2 tbsp soft butter (or pumpkin butter)

Preheat oven to 375º. Line a cookie sheet with wax paper and grease well.

Mix first 6 ingredients. Pour onto greased pan and sprinkle with nuts, if desired. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes.

While the bread is baking, you can prepare the filling. Mix all of the filling ingredients together until mixture is smooth.

How Does She has a great photo tutorial of the next step. Basically, you lift the roll from the pan on the wax paper and flip it upside down on a tea towel. Then you roll the tea towel up to form a log. Let the roll cool inside the towel for about 10 minutes. Then, unroll the towel and spread the filling evenly across the roll. If you want to be different, stop right here and enjoy the pumpkiny goodness. If you want yours to be pretty and fit to serve to company, roll it back up. Enjoy!