Healthy Pumpkin-Apple Harvest Cake

Hi everyone! My name is Lauren. Carrie and I went to high school together and now I live in Fort Collins, Colorado with my husband, Jeremy and son, Jackson. Jackson turned 1 last week. I spent a while looking for a healthy cake recipe for him to have on his special day. This recipe, from a "green" parenting blog turned out wonderfully! It calls for several organic ingredients, but if you aren't into that thing, you can just use "regular" ones and it is still just as good...and way less expensive! This is also a great breakfast food...without frosting, of course!



Ingredients

• 1 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 2 large beaten eggs
• 3/4 cup organic sugar
• 3/4 cup all purpose, unbleached flour
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup chopped apple (I recommend dicing)
  

Directions

• Pre-heat your oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour an 8" round pan. You can also use cupcake papers if you want to make individual cakes. This yields 8-9 standard sized cupcakes.
• Combine pumpkin, eggs, and sugar.
• Add flour, cinnamon, baking powder, ginger, and salt to the pumpkin mixture. Stir to combine.
• Add apples, stir again, and pour into pan (or cupcake papers...mostly full).
• Smooth batter out and bake for 20-25 minutes (cupcakes too).
• Cool in pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Then, invert onto the rack, remove pan, and cool completely. For cupcakes, pop out of pan and let cool on a wire rack.
  

• Note: Smoothing out the batter ensures a "nice" looking cake. Pumpkin bakes in whatever shape the batter is in when you bake it!
• When cooled, dust with powdered sugar or a frosting! Deeeelicious!