Our Best Pumpkin Roll

Author Notes

The Pumpkin Roll—not to be confused with The Pumpkin Roll—is a type of Swiss roll cake baked and shared during the holiday season. The sponge is flecked with pumpkin pie spice and the buttercream, beefed up with tangy cream cheese. In tracing the recipe’s history, I learned that the pumpkin roll was largely popularized by the canned pumpkin purée brand, Libby’s, which inspired this recipe.

The challenge: to develop a cake that’s tough enough to roll, but not tough. Because fat creates tenderness, there is no oil in this cake (!); but fear not, the pumpkin pureé provides moisture and the eggs, just enough richness. There’s both baking powder and baking soda in here to provide maximum-lift at minimum-height (poured and spread, the cake ends up being roughly ¼-inch tall). I played around with a few ratios of butter to cream cheese for the cream cheese filling, and liked 1:2 best. The recipe below yields a creamy, tangy, not-too-sweet frosting (thanks to salt, cider vinegar, and ground ginger) that plays politely with the spiced cake. That all said, I’ve also come to realize that many people have many strong feelings about pumpkin rolls. So, do feel free to inverse the ratios (5 ounces butter: 2 1/2 ounces cream cheese) if you want a more buttercream-y frosting.

If you can’t be bothered to buy a jelly-roll pan, you can try this: Draw a 10”x15” rectangle onto a sheet of parchment, then line your pan with said parchment drawing-side-down. When baking, spread the batter within the drawn rectangle. And if you happen to have pumpkin pie spice around, feel free to swap in an equal quantity instead of the called-for spices in the cake. —Coral Lee

Test Kitchen Notes

This is one of Food52’s Best Recipes. In this series, our test kitchen sets out to create the ultimate version of your favorite recipes. Let us know on the Hotline if there's one you'd love to see next. —The Editors