Okay, so, perhaps I fail at these throwdown contests by fault of not posting my recipe. But, uh, I just wanted to give Daisy a week or so of feeling confident before I demolished her with my pumpkin bread. Yea, that was it. It definitely wasn’t because I’m self-involved, busy and can’t figure out why suddenly I can’t upload any of my iPhone pictures onto my computer. Nope. Definitely boosting my girl’s self-esteem.
ANYWAY, this recipe is one I’ve used for years. I don’t remember it’s origin, but what I find so entirely lovely about it is the mix of spices. They add fantastic flavor and if anything, the bread gets better the 2nd and 3rd day. It also makes enormous quantities and freezes beautifully after baking.
Let’s get on to the throwdown, shall we?
Ingredients
15oz can pumpkin puree (Not pumpkin pie mix!)
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup water
3 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1 bag chocolate chips
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 unless your pans are dark (non-silver) in which case, go down to 325. Grease and flour 3 loaf pans. (You’ll notice that I used some silver and some black, and erm, one round non-loaf pan. They all turned out fine, but the black pans cooked up much darker than the silver. If it was me and I had a choice, I’d go with light colored pans.) If you don’t have 3 loaf pans, you can make these into muffins (or some loaves and some muffins), but you’ll have to watch the timing so they don’t end up overcooked.
2. Mix pumpkin, eggs, oil, water, sugar and vanilla together. It should look a little gross. To say the least.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flouir, soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir into the pumpkin mixture until just combined. (Or, if you’re lazy like me, just sprinkle all the dry ingredients over the top of the pumpkin mixture and mix until just combined. There’s one less dirty pan my way.)
4. Add chocolate chips. Don’t overmix if possible. Admittedly, the chocolate chips are optional, and if you can get ahold of them easily I think the mini chocolate chips are the best, but frankly, any chocolate chip will do. You cannot go wrong with the pumpkin chocolate combo.
5. Pour into pans and bake for about 50-55 minutes. The bake time on this varies, especially if you’re using bigger or dark loaf pans or if your oven’s temperature is as variable as mine is. I check mine at 20 minutes and 40 minutes and then check the doneness with a toothpick from there. If you’re finding that your bread is getting too dark on top, but not baking through, take a piece of foil and make a little “tent” to put on top of your bread. That should slow the darkening but allow the baking to continue.
(Yea, I totally failed at taking a picture when the bread was done. Oopsies.)
6. Let the bread cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan and if it’s sticking, loosen around the edges with a butter knife before trying to turn the bread out.
Extra loaves can be stored in the freezer and defrosted on the counter.
Adaptations here include altering the spices to your own preference (like, um, how I really don’t care for ginger so I keep it really light), ditching the chocolate chips (but WHY?) or adding in nuts (again, WHY?). It’s pretty reliable, but don’t go too crazy.
So now the throwdown is really on. Pick your pumpkin bread favorite!