I am shamelessly in love with all things pumpkin. I find ways to work it into our regular meal rotation—in both sweet and savory forms—as soon as a single leaf on a tree turns yellow and the temperature drops even slightly below sweltering. Fall is pumpkin season, so even though it will be the star of the dessert table in next month’s holiday lineup, I enjoy pumpkin for several weeks in pie, muffins, soup, cake and even pasta. Pumpkin goodies are nutritious (lots of vitamins and antioxidants), beautiful, and as an added bonus they perfume the kitchen with the scents of the season every time they are used.

Another thing I love about pumpkin is that it is easy to use. Roasting and mashing a pumpkin is not terribly difficult (I have done it a few times), but canned pumpkin is every bit as tasty in my opinion. It keeps things simple because it tends to be consistent in terms of water content when it is canned, which makes for reliable results in the kitchen. Most of the recipes I have collected over the years simply call for a full can of pumpkin (or two), meaning I do not even have to dirty a measuring cup for that part of the recipe.

I thought I had tried more or less every variant of pumpkin (waffles… soup… cheesecake… bagels!) but this year I added a new headliner in my repertoire. This dessert (I am not sure what to call it exactly—it seems to be part cake, part pudding) starts out in much the same way a pumpkin pie does, with eggs, evaporated milk, pumpkin, and wonderful fall spices. Instead of a traditional crust, though, a dry cake mix is scattered across the top of the custard in a solid layer, then topped with melted butter.

This is the kind of dessert you might find in a church cookbook, but the result is truly out of the ordinary. The whole thing comes together in a flash, and while it does take the tiniest bit of patience to allow it to cool, the payoff far exceeds the effort. The butter soaks into the cake mix as it bakes to create a rich, slightly crusty, decadent counterpoint to the pumpkin. I served it with a simple dollop of lightly sweetened whipped cream, but vanilla ice cream would be delicious too, especially if you serve the dessert still a bit warm from the oven.

Fun fact: more than 80% of the country’s pumpkin is grown and harvested in Morton, Illinois. Each fall, the pumpkin crop is canned and stored to be used throughout the year. Because this crop is a once-a-year phenomenon, the supply sometimes gets a little spotty during the holiday rush. To avoid any pumpkin-related emergencies, I recommend stocking the pantry now and keeping pumpkin on hand for the rest of the season and well into the new year. If you are anything like me, you will be reaching for those cans, long after the last leaf of autumn has fallen.

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Pumpkin layered dessert

Be sure to use evaporated milk, not sweetened condensed milk, for this recipe.

• 2 15-ounce cans pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
• 12 ounce can evaporated milk
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• ½ cup brown sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• ½ tsp salt
• 13.25-ounce box yellow cake mix
• 1 cup melted butter
• ½ cup toasted pecans, chopped (optional)
• Sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, for serving

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease a 9×13 baking pan with non-stick spray. In a large bowl, mix pumpkin puree, evaporated milk, sugars, eggs, pumpkin pie spice and salt until smooth. Pour the pumpkin mixture into the prepared pan. Sprinkle the dry mix carefully and as evenly as possible over the pumpkin mixture. Then, gently, pour the melted butter evenly over the cake mix, but do not stir (the pumpkin mixture, the dry cake mix, and the butter should be separate layers). Bake for 55 to 60 minutes until golden brown. Let the dessert cool for at least half an hour, then serve with whipped cream or ice cream and a sprinkle of toasted pecans.

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Article and photo by Lisa Crockett