Usually I can look at a recipe and have a pretty good idea whether it's worth the trouble or not. Sometimes I make a recipe that doesn't seem like a good idea just in case I'm wrong. On occasion I have been wrong.

One of my foodie friends on Google+ posted a recipe for Brown Butter Pumpkin cake with Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting and roasted marshmallow filling. My immediate thought was that there is a lot of adjectives in the name followed by "I bet that's way too rich". Sometimes I make recipes just because I like getting new ideas. This time was a mixture of reasons but partly because it was pretty.

I'd planned on making Pumpkin pots de Creme for Thanksgiving dessert which are a favorite but none of the stores had Munchkin pumpkins so I made this cake instead.

The instructions go something like this - brown a bunch of butter as if you were making a browned butter sage sauce. Then make a pumpkin cake with it spiced with cinnamon, ginger and allspice. Then roast marshmallows under the broiler, combine with marshmallow fluff, more sugar and more butter. Then make the Cinnamon Swiss Meringue Buttercream comprising of lots more butter, more sugar, egg whites, cinnamon and vanilla of course. In total this recipe uses 7.5 sticks of butter (almost two lbs), 3.5 cups of sugar, 16 marshmallows and half a pound of marshmallow fluff. What's amazing is the final product although over the top isn't as crazy as the ingredients sound.

Conclusion: I think if I adapted this cake into a two layer (one layer split or two full layers) with just a thin layer of buttercream frosting it would be more practical. You can beat the name and how wonderful it looks though.