Gingerbread Cake part two: The Pumpkin Variation

As before (in this post), with ingredients as follows:

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup pumpkin
1/4 cup margarine
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 large egg, beaten
1 cup mild molasses mixed with 1 cup hot water

(I've highlighted the changes).

Methodology remains the same:
1. Preheat oven to 350* F. Mix wet ingredients (sugar, egg, margarine, pumpkin) in bowl with electric mixer/immersion blender type of frog.

2. Sift together flour, baking soda, spices, salt. Be careful if you don't want flour all over the kitchen (why you would object to this I cannot think.)

3. Alternate between adding molasses and flour mixture to the wet ingredients. Pour into a greased 9" baking pan (I used a round one with 2 inch sides I think). Bake in the middle of the oven until the knife comes out clean, approximately 40 minutes. You can then turn it out of the pan without much fuss.

Notes
This can totally be thrown together, Iron Chef style, in 30 minutes if you are really pressed for time. Since clean up takes about 15 minutes, figure about an hour and a quarter start to finish (I'm typing this up at the 52 minute mark). Today I had exactly 2.5 hours (from the time I left work to the time I have to leave for aikido) to devote to this project, and that included shopping time. It looks like I'm going to make it (er, touch wood or something).

With the pumpkin, the cake has 2510 calories per cake, or 168 calories per slice for 15 slices, so not too shabby. I compensated for the added liquid by adding an extra quarter cup of flour (the making of the cake was not assisted by the death of my quarter cup measure halfway through the process, grr.)

I don't expect the cake to come out especially pumpkin-y; to accomplish that I should have probably dropped the amount of molasses or something (it tends to be quite strong). Still, it should make a nice offering for tomorrow. We'll see how the audience reacts. Last week's preliminary test went well, but I feel like tomorrow's crowd is much tougher, especially as it includes both of my younger brothers...

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving to anyone who happens to be out there, and don't forget to check out the Thanksgiving Em oi!

ETA: Audience reaction gave this one full marks. Total success.