To be sure, we appreciate all our readers, but Sara, a reader from California, is getting a little extra love from us today. Not only did she make our day by writing in gushing about how the Brown Butter Pumpkin Layer Cake was true to its “Great Pumpkin Cake” cover line, she also sent us a photo of her cover recreation, and indeed, she looks satisfied with herself. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she took great pains to place each pecan and pepita in a specific location for the picture-perfect topping. Sara told us that she made the cake as part of a Thanksgiving-worthiness test. It passed. Move over, pumpkin pie.

Luckily for us, Sara’s not alone; Fine Cooking has the most passionate readers around. Our gallery boasts more than 1,000 posts, most recently those of several diehards participating in our Cook the Issue 2010 Challenge. Special thanks go out to Pielove, liamsaunt, ICDOCEAN, legalcat, and anyone else who snaps a picture and shares a meal with us on FineCooking.com. 

Update: Pielove is so right (see comment below). Check out Texas_Foodie‘s more than two dozen contributions as well; she recently took on the pumpkin layer cake with great results, too. Love it!

If you’ve recreated a cover—or made any recipe from Fine Cooking—let us know and share it with us in the gallery. We love to see what inspires you from every issue. Thanks, Readers!