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Dessert

Golden Harvest Cake

A moist cake made with butternut squash, green apple, raisins, pecans, and a pecan praline frosting.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Golden Harvest Cake

Oven350°F
Time55 minutes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

  2. Butter and flour 3 9-inch round cake pans.

  3. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  4. Add eggs, and beat 2 minutes.

  5. Add puréed squash and apple, and mix thoroughly.

  6. Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt in separate bowl. Sift together, and add to butter mixture in 4 separate batches.

  7. Fold in raisins and chopped pecans.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake cake 55 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

  2. Remove from oven, and cool.

Make and assemble the frosting

  1. Place brown sugar and heavy cream in saucepan, and bring to a boil over medium heat.

  2. Reduce heat to low, and cook 10 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat, and add butter and vanilla.

  4. Set aside to cool to warm, but do not stir.

  5. Place frosting in bowl, and beat in confectioners’ sugar, a little at a time, until spreading consistency.

  6. Fold in chopped nuts, saving pecan halves to place decoratively around top of cake.

  7. Place bottom cake layer on plate, and spread frosting on it, letting frosting drizzle down side of cake.

  8. Repeat with remaining two layers.

  9. Alternatively, frost each cake layer, both sides and top.

  10. If frosting begins to harden, dip spatula into warm water to make frosting easier to spread.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

1126Calories
24 gProtein
46 gFat
156 gCarbs

Counts 12 of 14 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 12 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Pecans1 oz (28g / ~19 halves)196
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Green Apple1 medium (182g)95
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Pecan1 half (4g)20
Vanilla1 tsp extract (4ml)12
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Cakenot in our table0
Pumpkinnot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Butternut squash + flourtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butternut squash + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten and starch structure that holds the cake together.
Dark brown sugar
Adds moisture, molasses flavour and a tender texture to the cake and frosting.
Butternut squash
Adds moisture and body to the batter, keeping the cake soft.

The step that matters

Cooking the brown sugar and cream to a boil and simmering 10 minutes. Sugar and cream must be cooked long enough to form a thick, fudge-like base. Stirring after the frosting is removed from heat can cause it to crystallise and turn grainy, so it is left undisturbed while it cools.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, butternut squash, flour, cinnamon, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, butternut squash, flour, cinnamon, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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