girl meets whisk

This is a recipe I’ve had clipped and stowed away for quite some time. It looks so impressive, so whimsical, so…so…so…do you really expect me to flip an entire jelly roll pan cake over and maintain my composure?  You’ve gotta be kidding me.

This year much of my family was out of town visiting other relatives or traveling during during the Thanksgiving holiday.  Due to the small number expected to attend our Thanksgiving dinner, approximately 14 guests as opposed to our usual 20 or more, I decided to give the famous  Libby’s Pumpkin Roll Cake a whirl (no pun intended).

I was cool as a cucumber while prepping and baking the batter.

Don’t overbake?  Not a problem.

Lay out a towel and sprinkle with powdered sugar?  No sweat.

Flip the baked pumpkin cake out of the jelly roll pan onto the towel in one swift motion?  Now that’s where I draw the line.

Who invented that step?  Who decided that it would be appropriate to request such a complicated technique to a novice baker like me?  Well, there was no turning back.  I’d either end up with a perfectly pinwheeled pumpkin jellyroll cake, or a pumpkin cake trifle (layered mush).

Either way, all systems were a go.

As a precaution, I laid out newspaper all over the counter, as many reviewers mentioned it caused quite a bit of a mess.   The kitchen towel was perfectly placed over the newspaper, surely Sunday’s paper would contain any crumbs or cake debris (catch my foreshadowing here?).  I sprinkled generous amounts of powdered sugar all over the towel to assure my confectionary masterpiece wouldn’t stick, and then I arrived at my most feared step.

Before the long anticipated “flip,” I loosened the cakes edges and gave the pan a few love taps underneath to assure it was nice and loose, and then gave it a quick flip right onto the towel. Whack!

I was on cloud 9.  And when I say cloud 9, I mean a cloud of powdered sugar literally rose up and around the entire section of the kitchen due to the whack I gave the cake onto the towel.  Phew.  I was in the clear, sort of.

After the dust sugar settled (quite literally), I carefully lifted the jelly roll pan and breathed (not too deeply for fear of breathing in pounds of sugar) a sigh of relief.  It was intact!!! Score!

I continued with the remainder of the steps delineated on the Libby’s recipe and was elated when the cake cooperated.

I had done it!

I was victorious!

I conquered my cake flipping fears!

Now, clean-up was a totally different animal.  Ugggh.

For more recipes, CLICK HERE.