Old Witch's Magic Nut Cake

Last week, my unfortunate English teacher friends had to have their regular, once-a-semester workshop to calibrate the grading of placement essays. The only good part of the lengthy meeting, as I understand it, is that there's food. The budget is not large, but they manage to order some pizzas and drinks, and sometimes, a kind soul steps forward to bring a homemade dessert. I am always lucky, because I am a speech teacher and am, thus, exempt from the dreaded workshop. But my neighbor across the hall, Carey, who coordinates the event, always brings me leftover pizza and Diet Pepsi. (Thank you, Carey!) And last week, another friend and colleague, Marta, offered me a piece of homemade cake for dessert. Now, I am not a big fan of cake as a general rule (that surprises you, doesn't it...but mostly, it's because I hate frosting), so I politely declined. But then she said, "Are you sure? It's a pumpkin nut cake." And those three little words won me over. Even though the cake had those wrinkly abominations (=raisins) in it, it was very good, quite moist and flavorful. Then Marta told me the origin of the recipe, and I became all the more enchanted (so to speak).


The recipe is from the back of a children's book from the 60's called Old Witch and the Polka Dot Ribbon, the sequel to Old Black Witch (commonly known as Blueberry Pancake Witch for the blueberry pancake recipe included in that story). Marta and her son first read the book that they checked out from a library back when he was young, and I guess she's been making Old Witch's Magic Nut Cake ever since, much to the delight of her family. The book is out of print, so I haven't read it myself. But apparently. the witch wants to enter her cake at the town carnival to win the polka dot ribbon for "Most Original Cake" (sounds like my biography, except for the witchiness, of course!). As Marta told the story, the witch is worried that she won't win, so she casts some sort of spell to spoil all of the other cakes. But something I found online said that the witch's neighbor always wins the prize, so she steals the other cake and hides it under her hat so that her own cake will win. (Mind you, if this were my story, I wouldn't stoop to any kind of deception to win the special ribbon--my cake would be victorious on its own merits! Hmph!) If anyone is familiar with this epic tale, please write in and set the record straight on the particulars of the plot, will you?

In the meantime, I encourage you to make the cake. It's perfectly autumnal and very yummy. Of course, I couldn't let well enough alone, so I made a couple of changes to Old Witch's recipe (I hope she doesn't curse me with an evil spell!). First of all, you can guess that I omitted the raisins, but I encourage you to leave them in if you can tolerate the evil little things. And since the raisins were absent in my cake, I doubled the nuts. As a rule, I double the nuts (and garlic) in all recipes, but I will leave that decision up to you. Finally, I did not care for the cream cheese frosting on Old Witch's cake. It wasn't creamy enough, and it had too much powdered sugar (too sweet) for my liking, so I swapped out my favorite cream cheese icing instead. I will share both versions below and you can decide. But I should tell you, when I made the cake for my trivia team this week, it was the frosting that they ooh'ed and ahh'ed over. Here ya go:


Old Witch's Magic Nut Cake
(Source: story by Wende and Harry Devlin)

3 eggs
1 (1 lb.) can pumpkin
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup water
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (you can swap out white whole wheat if you like)
2 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup yellow (one might say, golden) raisins (I omitted these, as is my way)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I double this, as is also my way, and I used half walnuts and half pecans)

Icing:
4 oz. cream cheese
3 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla or lemon juice
1/2 box confectioners' sugar
chopped walnuts to sprinkle

Beat together wet ingredients, mix together dry ingredients and combine the 2 mixtures. Pour batter into 3 pans (or pound coffee cans--or I just used a 13x9). Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes. Cool cake(s). Cream together ingredients for icing. Frost top of cakes and sprinkle with more chopped walnuts if desired.

My Favorite Cream Cheese Frosting
(Source: Southern Living)

1 8 oz. package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened
1 pound (16 oz.) powdered sugar, 3 1/2 to 4 cups
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat cream cheese and butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating until light and fluffy (don't use too much powdered sugar--you want it very creamy and supple!). Stir in vanilla.