Spiced Pumpkin Bread
What’s the holiday season without some sort of pumpkin magic? As soon as Halloween starts approaching and the leaves begin to turn color, my hankering for pumpkin goods begins. Rather than start the season out with everyone’s tried and true pumpkin favorite, pie, I decided I wanted to go a different route…I wanted to go bread! I remember several years ago at a family get together, one of our distant relatives had brought a pumpkin bread. It was unusual, but man was it good! Moist, flavorful, and positively scrumptious, it’s faded memory was all the encouragement I needed.
Because we never seem to be able to do anything half heartedly in this household, I went with a recipe for a spiced pumpkin bread…we not only want it flavorful, we want it to exclaim its greatness to our palettes! That being said, this pumpkin bread not only delivers on the flavor and holiday spiciness, but it does so without being overbearing or obnoxious. The pumpkin puree gives it a lovely harvest color and keeps the bread moist and delicious.
This comes together and bakes up pretty quickly and is great for a quick get together or family gathering or, if you’re like me, a nice quickie breakfast!
Spiced Pumpkin Bread
Adapted from Bon Appétit | November 1995
Ingredients
3 cups sugar (I reduced this to 2 1/4 cups and found it to be sweet enough)
1 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1 16-ounce can solid pack pumpkin
3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts (optional)
Preparation
Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour two 9x5x3-inch loaf pans. Beat sugar and oil in large bowl to blend. Mix in eggs and pumpkin. Sift flour, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, salt and baking powder into another large bowl. Stir into pumpkin mixture in 2 additions. Mix in walnuts, if desired.
Divide batter equally between prepared pans. Bake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour 10 minutes. Transfer to racks and cool 10 minutes. Using sharp knife, cut around edge of loaves. Turn loaves out onto racks and cool completely.
You know.. I just made pumpkin bread this weekend. It was from a ‘gift basket-y’ thing that was either a not so good gift, or an even worse Tricky Tray (or Chinese Auction – no offense.) It’s ok. Not really moist. Yours looks a lot better. I had to substitute a milk & oil mixture that I found on the Interweb. ~maybe thats what made my Pumkin Bread dry and not so good.
Anyway, I would like to say I will try YOUR recipe – but I never will.
Heh, I like putting this into gift baskets and stuff too..it travels well. I baked some in jars and sent to my friend in Afghanistan. They held up beautifully! One of these days, you’ll move over to the dark side and use one of my recipes…you’ll see!
I am curious about how to bake in jars for shipping or gift giving. I make baskets to give to friends over the holidays and would like to try several recipes in this type of packaging. Plastic wrap and tin foil only work so well. Thanks, Patti
Hi Patti, I was going to do a post about jar cakes, but figured I’d just tell you now so you can get things going for the holidays. I use 1 pint canning/mason jars with wide mouths. Sterilize all components according to instructions and dry. Spritz each jar with a bit of baking spray and fill it halfway with my cake or bread batter. Be sure to wipe off any excess batter from the sides or mouth of the jar otherwise it will burn and bake it in the oven like that. I usually place them on a jelly roll pan so they don’t tip over on the oven racks.
Cooking time will vary depending on the type of cake or bread that you’re making…I’ve found that denser cakes or quickbreads hold up the best and I usually start checking for doneness around 30-35 minutes and I use a long bamboo skewer to poke all the way down to make sure it’s all done.
Remove them from the oven and while they’re still hot, put the canning lids and rings on. As the cake cools, it’ll create a vaccuum and seal the jar up. Once they’re fully cooled, you can decorate the jars with fabric, ribbon, or labels.
[...] to send to my friend stationed in Afghanistan. Tagged as Project: Cakes in a Jar, I settled on my spiced pumpkin bread recipe and this lovely swirled cupcake to bake and send to Ricky. Baking cakes in jars, I found, is a [...]
Nutella Swirled Cupcakes and Project: Cakes in a Jar « Tastydesu — where delicious food lives said this on December 17, 2010 at 7:01 am |