Gluten Free Cinnamon Pumpkin Roll

Cake
3/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill 1-1 Gluten Free Flour
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup sugar

Cream Cheese Filling

8oz softened cream cheese
1/4 cup softened, unsalted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 3/4 powdered sugar
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Start by preheating your oven to 350°F. Prepare a jelly roll tray, or a large cookie sheet, by covering with parchment paper. No greasing is necessary.

In a medium bowl, combine your first five dry ingredients; flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and cloves. Set aside.

In a small bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, 3 eggs, and vanilla. Then, add your sugar and stir until smooth.

Pour your pumpkin mixture into your dry mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until everything is combined and smooth. You don’t want to see any flour that hasn’t been mixed in. Pour the batter onto your jelly roll/cookie sheet and spread evenly over surface. Try to get batter as even as possible so it will cook uniformly. Just a little shake of the tray may be enough to get it mostly spread. You don’t want to force it too much or you might push it too thin. The batter might not reach the long edges completely, and that’s fine. You just don’t want to be able to see through it or it will crisp up in the over and you won’t be able to roll it.

Now that the batter it spread over your tray, put it on the middle rack of the oven and bake for 15 minutes.

While the cake is baking, you can whip up the cream cheese frosting.

In a large bowl, mix with an electric beater the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla extract. Mix until smooth.

A cup at a time, add the powdered sugar. Powdered sugar likes to clump up, so I recommend putting each addition through a sifter. Add the cinnamon and mix until combined. Frosting is done! There will be extra so don’t worry about wanted to taste test it a couple times while you wait for the cake.

When the cake is done, remove from the oven and let it cool for a couple minutes (not longer than 5). This part is going to sound a little tricky, but it really isn’t bad. You’ll need another sheet of parchment, the same size as your first. Place this sheet over a rectangular cooling rack, if you have one. If not, just place it on your countertop. You want to transfer the cake to this new sheet, top side down. So, you’re going to pull the cake off by holding the corners of the parchment it is on. Just the two corners on one side (doesn’t matter if it’s long side or short side) is enough. The cake will be sticky enough that you don’t have to worry about it coming detached from the parchment during transfer. Carefully lift the cake up by these two corners and lay flat down on the new sheet so the cake now has parchment on both sides. Then, gently lift off the original sheet from the top. It’ll be a little sticky, but should peel off pretty easily. Just go slow so you don’t tear any of the cake.

So, you should now have a long rectangle of cake upside down on a new piece of parchment. The cake will still be quite warm at this point, but shouldn’t burn your fingers to the touch (you can let it cool a bit more if it’s still too hot, but don’t let it cool completely. Starting at the short end, begin to roll up your cake, parchment and all. Roll gently and consistently. You don’t have to make it super tight. Once you’ve completely rolled the cake up, let it sit like that on your cooling rack until it has completely cooled. Rolling it up while it’s warm creates a “memory” for your cake. So, when you re-roll it after it has cooled, it will be easier to do and less likely to create any cracks.

Once the cake is cool, carefully unroll it until flat. You’ll see that the edges want to stay curled up a bit. That’s good! It’s ready for icing now. Spread the cream cheese frosting over the surface or your cake (you’ll have a bit left over), leaving about half and inch from the end. This will keep the end of the spiral clean and sealed. The amount of icing used here is based on how you like your cake, but remember that if you over fill it, the frosting will want to spill out the edges and you won’t get as tight of a roll. I like to keep it a bit thin (you’re going to have layers of cake and icing in the end, so it adds up anyway) and I usually have almost a cup of frosting left over.

Now, roll your cake bake up in the same direction as before. Try to keep it fairly tight so you get a nice, round spiral. Yay! Hopefully you didn’t get any major splits. I never have with this recipe, so I think you should be ok. You’ll want to chill this for a bit before you cut and serve, so I recommend wrapping it up completely in plastic wrap and leaving it in your freezer for at least 20 minutes. Once it has chilled, it will be easy to make clean cuts. Slice off each end so they are flat and clean. Dust with powdered sugar, and you’re ready to serve!!

As you probably know by now, I roasted up my first pumpkin recently, so I have all this pumpkin puree hanging out. It’s actually pretty awesome to have so much just from one $2.50 pumpkin. Since I’ve been developing recipes, I end up making the same things over and over and over. This uses a lot of ingredients. And I haven’t run out of anything yet! Cream cheese is really cheap right now too, so I’ve been buying 4 boxes at a time. My husband doesn’t mind, but asked that I get bagels too.

So, before you get your jammies on and camp out on the couch for the rest of today, I recommend whipping up this easy, quick pumpkin roll. It only has to bake for 15 minutes, so you can definitely have this ready in an hour or less!

Now, I’ll be honest. I’m not a huge cream cheese frosting fan. I’m sorry! Please don’t hate me. I don’t have anything specific I dislike about it. It’s just not my favorite sweet flavor profile. But, I will tell you, I like to add a little cinnamon to the frosting and then everything changes. That bit of spice adds a little punch that makes me lick the spoon clean! So, if you’re a hardcore original cream cheese frosting fan, just forgo the cinnamon addition, but I urge you to give it a go!

This cake keeps so well in the freezer. I like to cut it up into individual slices and wrap them up separately so they are ready to pull out for a snack. I’m happy to eat them straight out of the freezer since they don’t freeze solid, but my husband likes to let them sit to room temperature. Either way, these are so yummy and easy.

I hope your cake comes out delicious and has a beautiful spiral!

-Lisa