Pumpkin Roll

I've lived in Southern California for the majority of my life and I've never experienced a true fall season.  Southern California does have 4 seasons, they are just very subtle.   Every fall there are a few species of trees with changing leaves that are always a joy to see (if you know where to find them), the temperature does dip down to the low 60's, and of course the pumpkins start popping up in the grocery store.

A giant can of Libby's pumpkin mysteriously ;) found its way into our pantry and Brett and I have been going a little pumpkin crazy.  Brett found a recipe for Pumpkin Roll online and got to work with me as his faithful sous chef.

The cake smelled amazing!  It took some restraint to not eat the cake immediately.  Brett prepared a kitchen towel covered in powdered sugar for rolling the cake up in.  It proved fairly difficult to roll the cake up carefully without it cracking, but we managed it.  It cooled in the towel.

Then came the even the trickier part of unrolling it, spreading the cream cheese filling, and rolling it back up.  Unrolling was slow work because even though the towel was covered in powdered sugar, the cake had absorbed it all and was now firmly stuck to the towel.  We had to peel the cake off as we unrolled.  The cream cheese filling spread nicely, but when we were re-rolling, the cake cracked a little bit and a lot of filling oozed dramatically out the side.

Difficulties aside, the log turned out beautifully.  We loved seeing the cream cheese swirl inside.  It tasted delicious (almost like pumpkin pie, which I am impatiently waiting until Thanksgiving to eat.)  There was only one thing we would have changed and that is the filling.  We used low fat cream cheese and it wasn't as smooth as the full fat would have been.  Oh well.  It was still good.