I’ve made this pumpkin cake (*recipe by Martha Stewart: Pumpkin cake with brown butter icing) enough of times that Souvik associates pumpkins only with cake. The brown butter is almost like ghee, and I like to think it is such a Marathi recipe. It looks a bit crazy with the caramelised walnuts, and I went mad with all the extra caramel that stretched out in thin long golden strands. Not just a little mad.

Martha’s cake looks neat and yummy. Mine just had a bad hair day. Thankfully most of the caramel strands melted down at room temperature and simply smeared all over the cake by the time we got down to eating it.

Over the years, all those doubting Thomases who can’t imagine what pumpkin would do to a cake have eaten a slice of humble pie with every bite!