Tara’s mom lives in Vienna, and a popular item there is Pumpkin Seed Oil! They eat it on salads as a dressing, and there is a pound cake that is made with it as well. Pumpkin Seed Oil has an intense and exquisite nutty taste, and is rich in essential fatty acids, so it’s very good for you, as well as producing a great green color to anything it touches!
Tara was so excited about the oil that her mom very generously gave us some, and today we baked the cake! We had to pretty radically adjust the recipe to make it vegan, because it used a lot of butter and eggs. But we came up with something good and it worked very well. Our cake was a deep green and a good heavy consistency. As it wasn’t too sweet, it would be great as a brunch item (with green eggs and ham?), but we got a little creative and added a few different sauces and icings to sweeten it up. You can see from the photo above, that we made a cashew icing that I’ve used before, from Hannah Kaminsky’s blog. This time I wanted it thicker, so I simply doubled the amount of cashews. As usual, it was delightfully creamy and rich. It was perfect paired with the cake!
We also made a raspberry compote from scratch that had a bit of orange in it to compliment the light lemony citrus flavor in the cake, and drizzled that on quite liberally.
My favorite addition to the cake was the pumpkin seed marzipan that we made from a combination of ground raw pumpkin seeds, raw almonds, powdered sugar, almond extract, a bit of pumpkin seed oil, and water. The consistency was a bit gloppy, but it tasted great and had that great green color that the pumpkin seed oil has. It was fun to mold and make shapes with! We put all our sauces and marzipan and things together, and made a very elaborate cake, shown below. The dark green top layer and little balls surrounding the base of the cake that look like capers, are really marzipan!
Here is what the cake looks like in loaf form, sliced:
Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs worth of egg replacer
2 tsp. lemon zest
1 Tblsp. apple cider vinegar
2 Tblsp. soy milk
1/2 cup pumpkin seed oil
1/4 cup canola oil
2/3 cup toasted pumpkin seeds, ground after initial measuring
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Fully grease a loaf pan, up to the top of each side.
Blend together the ground pumpkin seeds, flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl to blend. Mix vinegar with soy milk in a small cup or bowl, and let sit until curdled. Using an electric mixer beat the sugar, egg replacer, and lemon zest in a large bowl until pale and fluffy. Beat in the vinegar and milk mixture. Gradually beat in the oils. Add the flour mixture and stir just until blended. Pour into the prepared pan. Bake until golden on top and a tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, about 35-40 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely. Remove the cake onto a platter. Serve with a sprinkling of powdered sugar on top, or with a sauce of your choice.
Cookies and Candids 
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