Winter Squash Cakes. A Thanksgiving Post a Bit Late....Or Super Early

Okay, I know that this post comes quite a bit after Thanksgiving.  It got lost under some other posts.  But, this recipe is great any time of year in my opinion.  

The Saturday before Thanksgiving I found out about Ken's Thanksgiving potluck at work.  I decided that the most logical thing for me to bring would be the turkey cupcakes.  Can you imagine me trying to make a turkey after not cooking meat for over a year??!!??

I love it when flavor ideas automatically come to me.  2 seconds after I decided to do cupcakes my brain had already decided on flavors.  While I was writing the recipe for the post I decided to change my cupcakes into sheet cakes.  Fat free cupcakes do not like liners.  I really want these desserts to be special and pretty and......perfect.  As an added bonus sheet cakes are quicker and easier to frost.  Which is nice if you have alot of other dishes to do.  I'm doing 2 different Thanksgiving flavored {yes, now Thanksgiving is a flavor} cakes.  The first is a pumpkin cake with a pumpkin frosting.  I call it Pumpkin Palooza.  The second one is a sweet potato cake with a meringue frosting.  The recipe for both cakes are the same except you are using sweet potato in one and pumpkin in the other.

The cakes before I frosted them.  Pumpkin on top, sweet potato on the bottom

Sweet Potato Cupcakes 

2.5 cups + 2 T flour

.25 cups + 2 T cornstarch

2 cups sugar

2.5 t baking powder

1 cup milk

1 cup pumpkin/sweet potato

2 t vanilla

.75 cup egg substitute (equivalent to 4 eggs)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 and spray a 9x13 pan
2. Whisk together your dry ingredients 
3. In a blender or food processor blend your wet ingredients until smooth
4. Mix wet ingredients into dry
5. Pour into prepared pan and bake for 30-35 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean 

Helpful hint:  I read that if you stick a metal decorating nail in the center of your cake it will bake evenly.

Pumpkin Cake Frosting

Ingredients

2 envelopes Dream Whip

2 (4 serving) packages of Pumpkin Pie Jello pudding mix

2.75 cup skim milk
.5 t vanilla

Directions

1. Mix Dream Whip with 1 cup of milk and vanilla in bowl of mixer
2. Beat on high speed for 2 minutes until light peaks form
3. Add milk and pudding mix
4. Mix on medium, then beat on high for 2 minutes
5. Let set for about 1 hour then frost cake

Sweet potato cake frosting

adapted from Martha Stewart

Ingredients

1.5 cup sugar

2 T corn syrup

.25 cup water

6 egg whites

Directions

1. In a double boiler stir together everything until they reach 160 degrees on a thermometer
2. Beat using a stand (or electric hand) mixer on high until there are soft peaks.  {this should take 5-10 minutes depending on your mixer} add in 1 t vanilla near the end

Want to see what else the girls had for their Thanksgiving lunch?

Turkey, cornbread stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, mac & cheese
a chocolate chip cookie and a brownie

And just in case I never showed you our Thanksgiving dinner: