Pumpkin Bread

I found this recipe on Allrecipes.com. It's one of my go-to sites. Usually, the recipes are tasty and not too complicated to make. I figured, what with all this holiday folderol upon us, a recipe for a good pumpkin bread would be nice.

Here's what you need:

1 15 ounce can of pumpkin (unless, of course, you're very motivated and want to puree your own. If that's your thing, have at it. I'm lazy. I used canned.)
4 eggs
1 c vegetable oil (I used olive oil because it's the only oil I ever have in my house and I like to kid myself that it somehow makes desserts slightly less bad for me.)
2/3 c water
3 c sugar (I used 2 cups white and 1 cup of brown because that's what I had on hand.)
3-1/2 c flour (You could, I suppose, use half wheat flour. I didn't because, again with the lazy.)
2 t baking soda
1-1/2 t salt (I used kosher because I worship at the altar of Alton Brown and that's what he always uses. Lemming? Me? Pshaw.)
1 t cinnamon
1 t nutmeg (Here is where I shall get all snobby on you and say that you really, really, really should use whole nutmeg and grate it yourself. It beats the pants off the powdered crap.)
1/2 t ground cloves (I didn't have any of these so I used pumpkin pie spice.)
1/4 t ginger

Heat the oven to 350.

- If you don't have one of those oven thermometers, I strongly suggest getting one. I found out today that I need one after this recipe took 25 minutes longer than suggested to bake. Guess what I'm buying tomorrow?

Grease and flour 3 7" x 3" loaf pans.

- I totally cheated and bought the throwaway aluminum ones. I don't bake enough to warrant buying three new pans.

Mix together the pumpkin, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended.

- This will look disgusting. But keep mixing.

Stir in the dry ingredients until just blended. Pour into pans, bake for 50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. 

- Or, if your oven is like mine, keep adding 10 minutes until the skewer you used, which you had to use because your 5 year old dumped the toothpicks all over the porch, comes out clean.

- In a fit of must-try-to-make-this-different-itis, I stirred chocolate chips into one pan and dried cranberries into another. The third I left plain.

Now, I'd love to show you a gorgeous picture here, but while I was at work tonight, the above-mentioned 5 year old and her charming little sister stuck their grubby little mitts in each loaf.  So I'll just say that the bread is yummy. I liked the cranberry one the best, but they were all tasty.

Comments

[Mama Zen]

I really need to make some of this!