Pumpkin cake with cream cheese icing, candied pecans and salted caramel

Made this or my mom's 75th birthday and it's one of the best cakes I've made. I just subbed in a GF all-purpose flour in the recipe and it turned out perfectly!

*Cake recipe:* baked as two 8" cakes, for 25 mins. Cut each layer in half. [https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/best-pumpkin-cake/](https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/best-pumpkin-cake/) *Icing:* from the same recipe above. It was exactly enough. Originally I wanted to cover the cake completely in icing, but it turned out better this way as it cut down on overall sweetness. *Candied pecans:* [https://www.glorioustreats.com/pumpkin-salted-caramel-cake/](https://www.glorioustreats.com/pumpkin-salted-caramel-cake/) *Salted caramel:* store-bought, which was a great time saver. I used Rochef Caramel fleur de sel - just make sure you get a proper caramel sauce, not "caramel flavoured topping". I used this to drizzle on top, and also as a filling in the middle of the cake. I'm a perfectionist 😅 and didn't want the caramel filling to simply soak into the cake layers, so I put a very thin layer of icing (thin like buttering toast, just to seal the gaps in the cake) on the sides of the cake surrounding the caramel layer.

One of the best things I've made