Welcome back to The Weedeater, Racket’s column exploring the exciting world of cooking with cannabis. Each month, I walk you through a tasty new cannabis-based recipe with foolproof instructions to make it yourself. Some are fast and easy. Others, elaborate and oh so very dumb. But all are delicious and leave you feeling real nice. With that, let’s get cooked!
Pumpkin Olive Oil Cake
It’s decorative gourd season, motherfuckers! And you know what that means: It’s also edible gourd season (motherfuckers)! Butternut. Spaghetti. Acorn. Kabocha. Delicata (my personal favorite). And who could forget the biggest dawg of them all, pumpkin, which is both a decorative gourd and an edible gourd. Wow!
Call me basic, but I love exactly one good pumpkin spice latte (thanks Tori Amos!) each fall. Beyond that, I don’t typically care for most of the pumpkin-spiced bullshit that gets shoved in our faces from the moment the first leaf touches the ground—I have no interest in trying pumpkin Spam or a pumpkin spice 5-Hour Energy Shot. Still, I do have a soft spot for the classics: pumpkin pies, breads, cookies, and cakes—really anything baked.
And so, to pay our respects to this mighty orange gourd, let’s make a pumpkin olive oil cake. But not just any pumpkin olive oil cake. This one is finished with a delicious cinnamon maple cream cheese frosting. Oh, and it has about 100 milligrams of the good stuff in the whole cake. This recipe requires some time and patience to decarb the weed, infuse the oil, and wait for the final cake to cool completely before frosting, but I promise it’s well worth the wait.
Here’s what you’re gonna need.
For the cake:
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
- 1 cup canned pumpkin puree
- 1/2 cup cannabis-infused olive oil*
- 2 large room temperature eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup
*NOTE: As a reminder, each tablespoon of cannabis oil is about 10 mg if you’re following the method from the deviled egg recipe. For a lower potency, cut it with non-cannabis olive oil—or, as most people call it, olive oil.
For the frosting:
- 1/4 cup room temperature unsalted butter
- 4 ounces softened cream cheese
- 2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
- 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1–2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 10–15 Granny’s Maple Cinnamon pretzels, crushed
Here’s what you’re gonna do.
- First things first, get your oven preheating to 350 degrees. On a sheet of parchment paper, trace the bottom of an 8-inch round cake pan and cut it out. Spray the pan with cooking spray, put the parchment round in the bottom, and give the parchment paper one more spritz for good measure.
- Mix your dries. In your largest mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking soda and powder, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, and salt. Give it all a quick whisk and set it aside.
- Mix your wets. In your second largest bowl, whisk the olive oil, granulated sugar, brown sugar, eggs, pumpkin puree, maple syrup, and vanilla until just combined.
- Combine your wets with your dries. Pour the pumpkin mixture into the dry mixture, making sure to use a rubber spatula to get every last drop so no weed is wasted. Stir until the dries are indistinguishable from the wets. The mixture should look like cake batter because it is.
- Bake and be baked. Pour the cake batter into the cake pan and put it into the preheated cake oven for 35–40 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when a toothpick or cake tester comes out clean when poked into the cake. When it’s done, put the whole pan on a wire rack to cool completely. Patience is key here. If you try to frost the cake before it’s fully cooled, it’ll be melting like a snowcone in Phoenix (to quote Mrs. Doubtfire, which I’m watching as I write this recipe.)
- Make the frosting. Sift the powdered sugar and cinnamon together to combine. Using a stand mixer or hand mixer, beat together the butter and cream cheese using the paddle attachment. Make sure both are fully-softened and room temperature. When the mixture reaches a similar creamy and fluffy texture as that entire pie tin full of whipped cream that Daniel Hillard/Mrs. Doubtfire had in their fridge for some reason, add the maple syrup, vanilla, and salt and continue mixing until combined. With the mixer turned off, add the powdered sugar and cinnamon. Beat on low until all the powdered sugar is integrated into the butter and cream cheese. Blast the mixer up to high and beat everything for one minute.
- Frost/Fixin. Run a butter knife along the edge of the cake pan and invert it to release the cake from its clutches. It should pop right out thanks to all the grease we sprayed. Frost the cake, sprinkle the crushed up pretzel fixins on top, and scarf. But scarf wisely. If you followed this recipe exactly using the full amount of cannabis olive oil and 15 pretzels on top, the cake’s full dosage is about 100 milligrams. Keep that in mind when portioning it out. Store the cake in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to five days. You’ll also probably have some leftover frosting. Store that in the same way for the same amount of time. I recommend dunking some Teddy Grahams (preferably cinnamon) into it for some peak stoned snacking.
Or you can take the easy way out.
Since the main source of THC in this recipe is in the cannabis-infused olive oil, finding an easy way out for this one is particularly tricky. You could just make the cake using normie olive oil and have the only THC source be the pretzels, but that drops the dosage significantly to only 10–15mg for the entire cake. Alternatively, you can add your desired dosage of Sota Drops into the batter. Or you could always just eat a store-bought pumpkin cake and take a bong rip with every bite. Either way, you’re getting a good bake from a baked good.
Well, that’s all for this one. See you next time!
