Pumpkin Crunch Cake with Chef Dennis
In this live cooking demonstration, Chef Dennis walks viewers through his signature Pumpkin Crunch Cake, a multi‑layer pumpkin spice cake topped with a buttery vanilla‑wafer, walnut, brown‑sugar crunch filling and a cream‑cheese‑mascarpone frosting. He explains the simple 3‑cup ratio for the crunch layer (vanilla wafer crumbs, chopped walnuts, packed brown sugar) and the butter needed to bind it, then shows how to press the mixture into pans for either a grand four‑layer cake or a smaller two‑layer version. The batter is built by creaming softened butter with sugar, adding pumpkin puree, Greek yogurt (or sour cream), flour, spices, leaveners, vanilla, and finally four eggs, with careful mixing to avoid over‑developing gluten. Dennis bakes the layers at 350 °F for about 25 minutes, rotates pans for even cooking, and warns against excess moisture on the tops. He pre‑makes a less‑sweet cream‑cheese frosting (optionally with mascarpone), chills it, and uses it to coat the assembled cake, noting the importance of a fully cooled cake before frosting. Throughout the session he offers practical tips—how to flip large cakes, loosen stuck pans with brief heat, using a serrated or hot knife for the crunchy topping, and storage in the refrigerator to firm the texture. Audience questions trigger advice on nut‑free alternatives, pan size adjustments, serving yields (12‑16 slices), and equipment needs. Dennis shares his informal, enthusiastic teaching style, emphasizing flexibility, forgiveness in the recipe, and the joy of sharing the cake with neighbors.
Chapters
make my pumpkin crunch cake today. So the first thing we're going to do to start with the pumpkin crunch cake is we're going to make the base and the crunch filling, and that's really the best part for me of the cake, that and the frosting of course. So to make the crunch filling, we're going to start with a few elements. And whoever joined can just mute themselves, I would appreciate that. We got some feedback coming.
Okay.
Great. Thank you very much. Okay, so what we're going to do now is we're going to start with the filling, or the crunch filling. And I have 3 cups of vanilla wafer crumbs that I have already done in my food processor. And this is kind of something that I like to do too, is if I know I'm going to make this a couple times, or if I'm going to make something a couple times in a while, you know, in a reasonable amount of time, I'll prepare everything, Ziploc them, so I don't have to go through the prep all over again, and it saves me some time and trouble. Then we're going to add in 3 cups of chopped walnuts, again food processed, so they're pretty fine. And again, it depends on how fine you want them, but I like to have a little crunch in them, so they're not really too, too fine. Alright, so we've got this all mixed together. Now there's one other element— oh, and I didn't get it, let me grab some brown sugar. Here, I thought I thought of everything. And I used to use light brown sugar with this, and if you do, the crunch filling is going to come out a little less dark. But I started using dark brown sugar, and I kind of like the way the results are with it. And we're going to do 3 cups of packed brown sugar. And of course, if you want to use light, you can use light. The crunch layer on the outside is going to be a lot darker than it would be if you used light brown sugar, but I like the contrast with the pumpkin. Kind of makes the layers look a little more distinctive. I actually did it because I had one person make it, and they said that it looked burned, and I tried to figure out how could it happen. So I thought maybe they used dark brown sugar instead of light, and it does come out darker. It might give you the appearance that it is burned, but it's not. Alright, so we have 3 cups, and this is really a pretty simple recipe to remember because it's 3 cups of everything. It's 3 cups of walnuts, 3 cups of vanilla wafer crumbs, and 3 cups of brown sugar. So the first thing you want to do is you just want to really get this all incorporated and mixed well together before you add your butter in, and that'll make sure that everything is kind of spread out and even so your mixture is nice. Okay, looks pretty good. Now we're gonna add in the brown sh— uh, the butter. And I have melted butter, I have 6 ounces of melted butter. So that's basically 2 ounces for every cup of the mixture that you're doing in here. So since we have 3 cups of each, that's kind of a good ratio to remember. You don't want it to be too greasy, too buttery, but you want enough butter in to really hold this filling and let it kind of turn into that nice little candy that it's going to become. Oh, I wish you could smell this. This really smells good. I'm about ready to dive into it. Surprised my neighbors aren't at the back door. This is their favorite cake too, and they wait for me to make it. Alright, so we have a nice, kind of a wet mixture. But it's not real wet, but you have enough butter mixed in. Okay, just want to make sure we get everything in there from the bottom. Alright, looks pretty good. Now, I'm gonna make a 4-layer cake. That's because it's, it's really impressive when it's 4 layers, and it's the way I've always made it. But if it's too much cake for 2 people, like if I wasn't giving this away to the neighbors, I would probably make a 2-layer version of it. But being a chef and Just being a little bit of the way chefs are, we like to make things as grand as we can, whenever we can. So we're going to make a 4-layer. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put about, oh, maybe a cup and a half in each pan. We're going to reserve a little of this because this is going to be— I guess closer to 2 cups, not a cup and a half. About 2 cups in each pan. We're gonna reserve some of this for the bottom, or for the sides, and for the top. So we want to get this even, and the thickness of the layer can be a little thinner, like if you didn't want quite as much crunch to it, if it was too sweet for you, or you didn't like it, you can cut this back a little bit too. But I like a nice thick crunch layer, and all I'm gonna do is work this into the pan with my fingers, kind of like you're making a graham cracker crust, the same kind of idea. You know, you got enough butter in there just to hold it together. You don't have to do anything to this pan because there is enough butter in this that will keep it from sticking. So if you did want to make just a 2-layer cake, if this was going to be too much for you, just cut the recipe in half. And everything should work out for you. Of course, if you do only make 2 layers, you'll probably be sorry. So, so really you're dividing this up into about 5 equal parts, 4 for the pan, and if you have another baking pan, you can set them up. If not, you can put it on a cookie sheet and just bake it in the oven on a cookie sheet, and it's gonna kinda meld into one big piece, and then you're gonna break it up into small pieces. Alright, so these are set. We have a nice layer of crunch in each one, and depending upon, like I said, how thick you want, and they don't all have to be perfect, they don't have to be the same, you know, it's gonna eat really good. So I'm gonna set these aside just for a moment. And we're gonna start making the cake. Alright, now to make the cake, really is pretty simple, and I'm going to refer to my directions here because my memory is not quite— I make so many things, I don't remember everything. Alright, the first thing we're going to do is we're going to beat our butter with some sugar. And the butter should be softened, but not so soft that it's really mushy. You want to get some— be able to whip it, but you don't want it melting on you while you're whipping it. Okay.
All right.
And we're just gonna whip up the butter, get a little bit of air into it, get it start moving. And then I'm gonna add in a half a cup of sugar. Now we want to scrape this down every now and then just to make sure we're getting a nice whip, because this bowl is really kind of large. I'm going to turn it on pretty high and just get some air into it. You can let this go for about 5 minutes if you think it needs that long, depending on how soft your butter was. But for the sake of this, I'm going to cut the time down just a little bit. I think it's going to be okay. Looks pretty good. Butter looks kind of nice and whipped, creamy. The sugar is incorporated, which is what we really want. So now that we have that in, we have the butter and the sugar and it's whipped. Next step is to add in the pumpkin and everything else except the eggs. So that's really pretty simple. It's not a difficult cake. So we're going to add in a 16-ounce can of pumpkin, and this is solid pack pumpkin too. It's not pumpkin pie. Want to make sure we get the solid pack. Alright, we have 1/2 cup of Greek yogurt or sour cream if you want to use sour cream. The original recipe called for sour cream, but I've pretty much been turning everything into Greek yogurt that called for that with no problems in the results. And then I have 2 1/2 cups of flour, and again, I set this up ahead of time. I made 2 of these, actually I pre-made one so we could go right to putting it together. And if you want to, you can sift— not sift, but mix the spices, the baking powder, and the baking soda. And here I have the baking soda, the baking powder, some salt, and pumpkin pie spice. If you don't have pumpkin pie spice, you can just use cinnamon and nutmeg, make up your own variation. If you have a favorite spice cake that you already make, you can always use that too. Alright, so once everything's in here, just going to turn it on low, get things incorporated. We don't want to mix this too much, any more than we have to. Just going to scrape it down. Add some vanilla, about a tablespoon of vanilla. K. And again, we don't want to overmix it. We don't want to get the flour moving too much in there, let the gluten start, so the cake is tough. So we just want to mix it enough. Make sure I didn't miss anything. 2½ cups of flour, 16 ounces of pumpkin, ½ cup of Greek yogurt, 1 tablespoon of pure vanilla, 1 tablespoon of pumpkin pie spice, 2¼ teaspoons of baking powder, ¾ teaspoon of baking soda, ½ teaspoon of salt. So we have everything in there. So now we're going to add our eggs one at a time into this mixture. Mix in a little bit. Second one. 3. And 4. Alright, scrape this down, make sure we have everything in here.
I have a question for you, Chef. Why put the eggs at the end? Do you not want to overbeat them?
The eggs go in at the end. Is simply because that was the way the recipe stated, and I pretty much followed it. This is a recipe I got, I don't know how many years ago when I first really started baking out of a Good Housekeeping book, and I've just been adapting it as I go along somewhat. But they call for the eggs at the end, and me being one that usually takes orders from people that know how to cook, I usually follow them most of the time unless, you know, I feel better versed at it, and I'm not that I'm not that big of a baker. I do it for fun and because I really like to eat baked goods, but I've never really been trained at it. So if it says at the end, I put them at the end. Now I do know that overmixing flour will make it tough. I mean, that's just once you get the gluten strands going. So when I do teach that part of class, I always tell them, you know, you just want to mix something minimally so you still have kind of a cake texture more than a bread texture. Okay. All right, so I think this is good. The eggs are mixed in pretty well. And this is going to be a really thick batter, which the first time I made it kind of surprised me.
Chef?
Yes?
Your audio is breaking up a little bit. I don't know if there's something you can do to adjust that.
Thank you. Now I'm actually going to go—
So, Chef. We're not seeing you. Ah, technology. That's my KitchenAid back there, see?
You guys hear me?
You can hear me now?
I can hear you, yes.
Great. Okay, I'm sorry about that. I had just charged that up, so I don't think it's the batteries. There just might be something wrong with it. We'll go with the microphone on the camera. Alright, so the batter is a little thicker than you may have thought, but it does come out to be kind of a nice textured cake. I'm just going to move this off to the side now. Okay, so here's what we have for a batter. It's really kind of thick. So now we're going to bring our pans back. We're going to divide this batter up between the 4 pans. It's not going to be a real thick layer. And you could measure this out if you want. I'm not quite that precise. Alright. That's pretty close. Alright, we're just gonna spread the batter evenly. You want to be careful. Not to pick it up too much because the crunch layer will start to come up. I love this offset spatula, it makes life so much easier.
Okay.
Alright, so that's done. The cakes would go in the oven now, 350 degrees, for about 25 minutes, and then you just want to test them with a toothpick in the center. It should come out clean. What you want to be careful when you do take these out is that the top doesn't get real wet, because if it gets moist, you'll end up losing some of the cake. You do need to loosen them out of the pan, but when you let them dry, you know, it's good to put them on a rack, or once the bottom hardens, you can pretty much set that on a rack. So these would go in the oven. Since you have 4 of them, you're going to have your racks positioned sort of in the middle. Slide them in. And then halfway through, if you like, you can take them out and rotate them around to make sure they're getting an even cook. All right, now through the magic of television, let me get a platter here. Alright, we're going to assemble our cake. I do have the layers, and you can see where this one was upside down the other way, and I lost a little bit of the cake because it got too moist. It wasn't quite cool enough when I did it, but you're not going to see it, so— I did make the frosting up ahead of time because we have half an hour to do this, Sim. So you can use— I have a cream cheese frosting recipe on there, and I do use some mascarpone with it. You don't have to. You can use all cream cheese. If you want to use a little bit more butter, this isn't a very sweet cream cheese frosting. I don't use quite as much sugar as a lot of the recipes do, so if you have a favorite one too that you like, or if you want it to be a little sweeter, now you can adapt it as you go. You can add a little more powdered sugar to it. What we're going to do at this point is we're just going to put a base layer on. It's enough to really get us some stick here. And your frosting, you really should make it a little bit ahead of time if you can, and you do want to get it in the refrigerator so it has a chance to firm up. I made the mistake of using it right after I mixed it, and it sometimes is just a little bit too soft. I've also made the mistake of trying to frost this when it was still a little too warm, and that's not something you want to do with a 4-layer cake. Luckily, when you're covering it, there's not a whole lot you can do to this cake to really hurt it. Alright, we're gonna go with the second layer.
We're gonna repeat.
Sometimes you'll find that the cake's a little uneven in spots too, and you might have to add a little more frosting under it, try and even it out. Lift it up, or if you can rotate it a little— it's a little hard to rotate it at this point, but if you can figure out which spot is higher.
Chef, do you have any tips for flipping the layers on?
Yes, thanks for asking that. Actually, the one thing you want to do is you want to let it— you want to try and get it after it's cooled enough to handle it, where it's still— the butter is still wet enough and still You got it lubed up enough so you can pick it up and turn it. So what you want to do is you want to just take your pans. I can't take a full one now, but take the pan, put a plate on, go around it with a knife, put a plate on top of it and turn it. And then I usually take something, a knife, and bang on the pan from the other side till I hear it drop. And you'll hear it drop. Now, if you do come to a point where the cake doesn't look like it's gonna come out if you've let it sit too long. If it's been, if it's cooled completely and you feel like it has really just kind of set back into the pan, the easiest way to deal with that in any cake that you can't get out of a pan is to turn the burner on. Put it on the burner for just about 30 seconds, minute tops depending on how hot the burner is. You just want to heat the bottom of the cake pan a little bit, and that'll loosen the cake out of it. So it'll turn right out at that point. This is one of my wife's favorite cakes. She's at school tonight for conferences, so she won't eat any. She's got too much control when she comes home tonight, but I'm sure she'll have a piece for breakfast tomorrow. Of course, the problem with her too is she has control, and she'll eat one piece, and that leaves the rest of the cake for me, and that's why I try to give it away to the neighbors so I don't eat it. Chef, have you ever tried that tip of warming up the bottom with a Bundt cake pan?
Would that work?
You know, I haven't. I have— I hate to say I've never made a Bundt cake, but I would think it would work somewhat. You've got more areas for it to stick to is your only problem, but that would at least get it loosened up. You know, maybe putting it back into a hot oven, the entire pan for a few minutes, for about 5 minutes might loosen it up. With the bundt cake, because then you're going to heat the whole cake pan. If it just stuck to the bottom, then it would probably work with just the stovetop. Okay, now I didn't try to keep this real neat because I know I'm covering the whole thing, but originally this is pretty much all they did to the cake. You could put a little decoration on the top of it, and this is how it was served originally. So I mean, if you don't like all that frosting on it, if you wanted to forego that, you know, this is the original way it was served. Now me just not being happy with that, I had to push it a little bit more. I kind of like to work from the top. It's a little easier for me, and I'm not putting a real thick layer on.
Oops.
Alright, so we want to get this on even, as even as possible. I can't stress enough about this cake being fully cooled. Before you do attempt this, anything this big. It'll start sliding off. And I tell you that from experience. Somebody wants a cake faster than you can really give it to them, and you try and give it to them, and you have problems. But if you want to cool it a little faster, you can put it in the freezer for a little bit. Chill it down. Okay, so the object here is to get a nice coat. Doesn't have to be pretty. Now again, if this is all you want to do to it, feel free to make it pretty and leave it at this. We're going to add a little bit more to it. So I'm just trying to seal it so that I have pretty much frosting on the whole thing. And then this really should set up a little bit before you cut it. And when you cut it, you do want to use a serrated knife. Okay.
Chef, would this store well in the fridge, or should it really be kept out on a counter?
I keep it in the fridge.
Okay.
I do keep it in the fridge. Now it does affect the texture of the pumpkin cake a little bit. It does get a little harder, firmer, I guess. Not really harder, but it gets a little firmer. But if you slice it and just let the slice sit out for a few minutes before you serve it, it'll be fine. But this is something you really— I would suggest keeping it in the fridge, finding a shelf that you can dedicate to it. Until you can serve it. If you can let it set up, like if you made this today and you were going to serve it tomorrow, that's fine. If you can let it set up in the refrigeration for a few hours, you're going to be a lot better off when you go to cut it, just because it is so big. All right, now here's what I did. I told you I made extra crunch topping. So what I did was I put it on a sheet pan and I baked it on the sheet pan and it just kind of all melted out together, like almost looked like one big piece of brittle of some kind, and it was a little stiff. So then you just break it up by hand into these little pieces, the crunch topping, and this is what I use to finish it off with. I will warn you though, we're walking the dogs after I had just given this to some of the neighbors, and a car pulls up, and one of the neighbors was in the car with her husband, and turned to my wife and said, "Can I have him when you're done with him?" So this is definitely a cake that will make everybody happy. I've had more than one marriage proposal over this cake. And like I said, this is darker. Like, if you look at the pictures of my cake online, they were made with light brown sugar. This is made with dark brown. So you can see the contrast, and I kind of like the contrast better. With this and with the light brown. And depending upon how much crunch you really want to put on the cake, now you can cover it entirely. I think that's pretty good. And I always do make a little bit extra. It finds its way into other baking projects. Great for cupcakes if you're going to make any, just regular spice cupcakes. You can put some of this on the top. Okay, that is my pumpkin crunch cake. Alright, any questions? You guys can unmute now if you'd like to ask anything.
When do we eat?
I know, I'm looking at it now. I pretty much used up all the cream cheese frosting, so I can't even dig into that.
I know here in the chat, the question came up that somebody couldn't use nuts. Is there a recommendation for maybe a substitute for that?
If you want to leave the nuts out, I'm trying to think of what would take its place. You could probably make it just with a cookie base and the brown sugar. The nuts add another dimension to it. I would experiment with it and see how it makes it. It's basically, think about a graham cracker crust crust, it's going to be the same type of crust that you're going to get without nuts. So even maybe using some Biscoff wafers or a couple different kinds of cookie wafers in there. You might want to mix it up with a chocolate— a little wafer in place of the nuts. But that's something I would try first because it may not get the crumble. That you want with it. But I think if you work with the proportions a little bit, you could probably get it to work for you without the nuts. Yeah, I know, there's so many nut allergies. Same thing at school. I'm always very careful about using nuts. I hardly use them at all in anything. We all wanted to know if you had 8 cake pans.
Had a?
8.
Oh, 8. I used to have more, and they got so old, I just threw some away. I only have 4, and that's actually going on my Christmas list is some new cake pans. They're in sorry shape, the ones that I have. I actually made these cakes last night, let them out to— set them out, and when I turned them over, that's when I found that I had set them too soon on the cake side, and the moisture had gotten to it a little bit. Still, it's going to eat fine. You're never going to see it with the frosting. That's one good thing about this cake is it's very forgiving. If the cake had split, you would just have to be careful about it sliding off, but for the most part, you're covering it with all this. This was something that I started doing when I started baking because I was never trained to decorate. This woman that was baking had taught me that if you covered it with stuff, nobody really cares if they're eating it and it tastes good and it It looks pretty when it comes out. It doesn't have to have roses on it or all these little other garnishes. I pretty much just cover my cakes whenever I can with something.
How many servings would you say?
Oh, I would say easy 12, maybe 16, depending on how you can get it. If it's chilled, if you get this in the refrigerator and let it set up well, you're You can probably cut the slices thin enough to get 16 out of it with a serrated knife or a very sharp knife, whatever works for you. You're going to run into a little bit of problem when you cut the crunch layer, just so you know that. That's why I use a serrated most of the time. The crunch layer does get a little hard. It almost gets this consistency of a candy. So it doesn't always cut, just cut perfectly. The cake is very dense though, so the cake isn't just going to crumble away from you. But if you let this set up well, chill it, it'll slice pretty easy.
Chef, I'm not sure how this works, but if you were to use a hot knife, would that help when you're cutting it? Like wipe dry, but—
It might, it might. It'd be something worth trying, especially if this was cooler, if it had cooled down. Yeah, just to get that crunch layer, maybe. Yeah, I don't think it being hot, if this didn't get a chance to really set up, would make a whole, whole lot of difference, but it might be worth giving it a shot. I know with certain things, the strangest things work. I found that cutting a pan of brownies With a plastic knife is the best way to cut through them without having it stick to anything and crumbling. You never know what you're going to use. This is just because of the height and the size. When you go, it's really the first cut is really going to be the hardest. Once you can get your hand in to kind of guide it a little after the first cut, it works a lot easier. It's always getting that first piece out. I missed the beginning part.
Was it 8-inch or 9-inch pans that you used?
I use 9-inch, but I don't think it really matters if you have 8. The layers will just be a little bit higher. Or you could proportion out just about— you could cut the recipe by about 20%, or not even that, 10%, if you wanted to make it a little lighter. But I don't think it would matter too, too much. There's not a lot, a lot of batter, as you can see. Or you might want to go to 3 layers then. You know, they're going to be higher depending on what you want to do. I have made this 3 layers a couple of times just because it had to travel, and it was just so a little precarious to take something this big. Any other questions?
Thank you very much, Chef, for showing us this. I really appreciate it.
My pleasure. Thank you so much for coming in today with me. Thank you, Chef.
Thank you.
For taking the Hangout. All right, have a great night. Happy Thanksgiving.
Thanks, Chad. Bye-bye.
See y'all later.
