Fall is about to end and I realized that I haven't even made any seasonal desserts this year. So I decided to change that and go ahead and make my very first pumpkin roll. This is actually something I heard about before, but never tasted or tried making myself. Back in the day, when I lived across the ocean, my husband @matt-a would mention it to me, so I thought "hey", I might as well just bake a pumpkin roll! I got on the internet and researched a few recipes, took something out, put something in, so there you go, people! Enjoy!

Pumpkin Roll With Walnuts

Ingredients for the roll:

• 3 eggs;
• 100-150 g sugar:
• 100 g four;
• 1 teaspoon baking powder;
• half a teaspoon baking soda;
• 1-2 teaspoons ground cinnamon;
• half a teaspoon nutmeg (or pumpkin spice);
• a pinch of salt;
• a handful or two walnuts;
• 150 g canned pumpkin puree;
• a sprinkle of vanilla extract.

Ingredients for the cream cheese filling:

• 200-250 g cream cheese;
• 100 g confectioners' sugar.

Most of the recipes I would go through, I noticed that they all called for a much bigger amount of sugar, since we usually don't eat a lot of sweet stuff, I reduced the amount of sugar in my pumpkin roll almost in half, you may add as much as you desire. Although the basic cream cheese frosting is made with butter I decided to skip that, not a fan of butter in desserts.
I also have a spice called "Winter Baking", it smells absolutely delicious. I got it from Whole Foods a while back, it is a grinder filled with brown sugar, lemon and orange zest, cinnamon, allspice berries, cloves, vanilla bean and nutmeg. It is a pretty good alternative to regular pumpkin spice, except it doesn't have any ginger root in it. Anyway, feel free to use whatever spice you're into.

Directions:

The directions are pretty straight forward and easy, so I thought even being a first timer. In a mixing bowl combine your dry ingredients aside from sugar: flour, baking soda, baking powder, the spices. In another bowl whisk together the eggs and sugar, then add in the pumpkin puree and vanilla extract. Pour the mixture into the bowl with dry ingredients and whisk well.

Preheat your oven to 360F or 180C. Get your baking sheet ready and line it with parchment paper, evenly spread the batter, top with walnuts or any other nuts of your choice, or skip them :).

Bake for approximately 15-18 minutes, it really depends on how thin the layer of your batter is, so it would be a good idea to check on it about 10 minutes later to make sure it didn't get burned. When it is done, take it out of the pan and roll the batter, let it cool completely. I didn't remove the parchment paper at this step, because I don't think it is really that necessary to roll the cake on a towel.

In the meantime, start working on the cream cheese filling, which is super easy since it is just cream cheese and confectioners' sugar, place them both in a mixing bowl and beat at high speed using a mixer until smooth.
Once the cake is cooled down, gently unroll it, discard the parchment paper and evenly spread the filling.

Okay, now roll it back tightly, but carefully, cover with some plastic wrap and put away in the fridge for about 30 minutes to an hour before serving. Keep leftovers refrigerated.

Until next time!