Grandma Wilma’s Pumpkin Rolls

Grandma didn’t always make these pumpkin rolls. She started baking them sometime in the late 1980s, after my mom had gone off to college. No one’s quite sure where the recipe came from, but it quickly became a signature dessert. In fact, Grandma went so far as to buy a stand-up electric mixer specifically to make them—and she even had a set of little kitchen towels that were reserved only for pumpkin roll duty.

One of my mom’s strongest memories is spending a quiet fall afternoon making pumpkin rolls with Grandma while nine months pregnant with my older brother. It should’ve been a peaceful moment, but it was a bittersweet one: my grandpa had just retired due to his progressing ALS, and the house they were cooking in had recently sold. That house, and the people in it, wouldn’t be there much longer. But there was still love and comfort in the kitchen—something you can taste in every slice of this recipe.

What sets Grandma Wilma’s pumpkin rolls apart? For one, she never skimped on the filling. Where most recipes offer a stingy swirl, hers delivers a thick, generous layer of sweet, tangy cream cheese goodness. The cake portion, too, is exceptionally moist—never dry, never crumbly. It’s everything you want from a pumpkin dessert: warm, soft, spiced just right, and deeply comforting.

A final tip: while we usually make them with walnuts, my mom swears they’re even better with pecans, which lend a deeper, richer flavor. I think she’s right.

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Pumpkin Rolls

Author: Wilma Stringfellow

Ingredients

Nut Roll

• Eggs | 3
• Sugar | 1 cup
• Canned Pumpkin Purée | 2/3 cup
• Lemon Juice | 1 tsp.
• Flour | 3/4 cup
• Baking Powder | 1 tsp.
• Cinnamon | 2 tsp.
• Ground Ginger | 1 tsp.
• Nutmeg | 1/2 tsp.
• Salt | 1/2 tsp.
• Chopped Walnuts | 1 cup
• Powdered Sugar
• Crisco

Filling

• Powdered Sugar | 1 1/2 cup
• Cream Cheese | 6 oz.
• Butter | 4 Tbsp.
• Vanilla | 1/2 tsp.

Instructions

Nut Roll

1. In a medium-sized bowl, combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt.
2. Beat eggs on high speed for 5 minutes. Add sugar and mix until dissolved. While continuing to stir, add canned pumpkin, lemon juice, and mixture from Step 1. You now have pumpkin dough.
3. Coat a 18” x 10” cookie sheet with crisco and flour. Pour pumpkin dough evenly into cookie sheet and sprinkle chopped walnuts on top.
4. Bake at 375° F for 15 minutes.
5. Prepare a large tea towel by coating it with powdered sugar. Upon removing the dough from the oven, quickly place the cookie sheet on the tea towel upside down. The cooked dough should slide out of cookie sheet without sticking.
6. Roll dough in tea towel long ways. Let cool for 90 minutes.

Filling

1. In a mixing bowl, combine powdered sugar, cream cheese, butter, and vanilla.
2. Beat thoroughly until smooth.
3. Unroll cooled pumpkin dough and spread filling inside. Roll again.
4. Wrap completed roll in foil and freeze for at least 12 hours.

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