Bethany's pumpkin roll

This is Chris's favorite time of year. His favorite meal is traditional Thanksgiving dinner, his favorite dessert is- actually he likes any dessert as long as it doesn't have nuts. But he loves, LOVES a pumpkin-y dessert so instead of the same old spice cake I make for him every year I thought I would ask friends for their favorite pumpkin dessert recipe. I received quite a few that included: pumpkin cookies, easy cheesecake, pumpkin bars and a pumpkin roll. Originally I went with the cookies which, in hindsight, was the WRONG choice.
At first glance of the recipe I thought the baking soda and powder quantities seemed a little high but baking is a form of chemistry, you cant 'eyeball it' like you can in other areas of cooking. So I didn't mess with it, I TRUSTED the recipe. And then they came out of the oven. Even after a sufficient cooling time they couldnt hold their shape. They were cake like but very dry and crumbly. Feeling my blood start to boil (yes, I have a temper about these things) I told myself, who cares right? I'm not trying to win a contest or anything... besides, Chris will have wolfed them all down in a day or two anyway. So I popped a broken piece into my mouth. And immediately spit it back out again. Bitter. SONOFA!!

I still had a mixing bowl full of dough. I figured tinkering with the recipe to see if I could counter the baking soda wouldn't hurt now so I cut it in half added more sugar to one and more flour to the other.

Fail and fail.

I had to pitch it all and I cannot put into words how irritated this made me. Not only is it a waste of a lot of ingredients but also two hours of my time and I had nothing for Chris's birthday.

So on Monday, a day late and two dozen cookies short, I opened a message from an old friend containing a recipe that I had been thinking about since I had received it.

Bethany if you're reading this, your recipe saved the day (ok, the day after but who's counting)! So here it is, Bethany's Pumpkin Roll:

Ingredients for cake:
3 eggs
2/3 cup mashed canned pumpkin
3/4 cup flour
1 tsp ginger
3/4 tsp nutmeg
1/3 cup chopped walnuts (I omitted these for the birthday boy)
1 cup sugar
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
2 clean, dry kitchen towels

Ingredients for Filling:
1 pkg cream cheese
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 375. Beat eggs for 5 minutes at high speed, gradually adding sugar, canned pumpkin and lemon juice. Sift together the remaining dry ingredients and add to pumpkin mixture. Line a 10 X 15 pan with well greased wax paper and pour batter in. Sprinkle nuts on the top. Bake for approx 15 minutes.

Make sure you don't over bake if your oven runs hot.

When you remove cake from the oven, pick up wax paper and place cake on one of the kitchen towels. Sprinkle top of cake generously with confectioners sugar to prevent sticking. Place 2nd towel on top of cake and roll lengthwise (jelly roll style). Cool completely in refrigerator.

Soften butter and cream cheese in the microwave and blend with the powdered sugar and vanilla. Cool completely in refrigerator.

After both cake and filling have cooled completely in the fridge, unroll cake and evenly spread the cream cheese filling on the cake. Carefully re-roll while removing the wax paper from the bottom of the cake.

Its heavenly and sinful all at the same time, if that's even allowed.