Pumpkin Unstacked Cake with Maple Cream and an Homage to Cook's

Eh.  Didn't get around to Quick Takes on Friday.  Sore throats, mine included, crusty noses, not mine but it was frequently rubbed on me, and second week in a row the washer is broken left me neither time nor inspiration for Friday QT.

But I did find the time to whip up this little creation on Saturday.  Pumpkin Stack Cake with Maple Cream. 

Now, that blogger in the link, she did a neat-o thing with her parchment paper.  I get out ye olde pencil and trace my pans on the parchment and then cut just inside the lines.  Different strokes...

Dire Warnings:  Should you make this delicious and easy cake, two things must be heeded.

First, pay close attention to the juggling of the layers post baking.  I left before all of my layers were done, and some less detail orientated folks might have cooled them upside down.  gasp.  Or cooled a layer upside down on the cake plate which then glued it there.  GASP! 

Second, DO not slice all the way across the cake!  That's how I usually slice my cakes, so the pieces are somewhat equal.  If you cut all the way across the cake, each piece topple and collapse and spill all over the tablecloth and you are left with Pumpkin Unstacked Cake.  Which also tastes good.  Disaster struck soon after the taking of the photo above.  So, trust me.  Just cut out one piece at a time.

This recipe, like 90% of what is cooked or baked around here, came from this magazine.  I have subscribed for nearly a decade.  I keep every issue sorted by month.  Every two months, I switch the pile of tattered, food-stained magazines out for the next season, putting the shiny new issue on top.  That way, I'm cooking seasonally a lot of the time, and we don't get tired of the same recipes.  Of course, we have our faves that appear frequently, like Mahogany Chicken (easy Asian dinner on the stovetop) and Deviled Chicken (easy SPICY oven fried chicken - we like it hot). 

And I have to subscribe online too, because it's so much easier for me to type "deviled chicken" or "glazed carrots" in the search box than to scan the indexes on the backs of the issues.

We also use their product recommendations.  When our corkscrew recently went kaput, I checked the recs on Cook's before ordering this gem from Amazon. 

You might think Cook's pays me to say such glowing things about them, but no.  Sadly, they don't.   I just had to renew my online membership like everybody else.  But it's worth every penny.