Pumpkin Bread
Two recipes for this winter favorite, plus two uses for the opened pumpkin purée can! One is a bread, the other more like a cake…try them both.
This one is more of a bread than a cake; the slices want to be buttered! The recipe calls for butter instead of oil and is delicately ginger flavored. I always add more ginger, or grate in a touch of fresh. Nuts add vital crunch but omit if you don’t like them; pecans are fine if you’ve run out of walnuts.
You won’t need a full can of purée, so it’s another good use of that leftover half/third/quarter tin: recipe really is that flexible in its ingredients:
1¼ cups flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp allspice or nutmeg
1½ ground ginger
2 eggs
½ cup white sugar
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup melted butter
½ cup pumpkin purée
¼ – ½ cup water
¼ cup chopped walnuts (optional)
Grease a 9-inch loaf pan and preheat oven to 350 F.
Melt butter on stove or in microwave.
Sift together all the dry ingredients and set aside.
With hand or stand mixer whisk together sugars and egg; add melted butter, then purée, then nuts.
Incorporate wet into dry ingredients until smooth—this is where you may need to add water. Depending on the size of your eggs and the amount of purée, the batter may be too thick to drop easily into the loaf pan. If your whisk or spatula stands up in the batter, you need to add water to make it smooth.
Bake until golden brown—50 minutes to an hour and 10 minutes—checking every five minutes after the 50 minute mark to see if cake tester (or toothpick) comes out clean.
Allow to cool for 10 minutes, then turn onto wire rack to cool the rest of the way.
pumpkin bread profile
And here is a recipe ostensibly for a pumpkin bread that ends up more like a tea cake: dense and moist, you can eat it alone or spread with butter and jam. Keeps for about ten days and tastes as delicious on day 10 as on day 1!
Before assembling ingredients, check your baking soda: if it’s been open more than six months or been used to absorb odors in the fridge or under the sink, it’s time to break open a new box. Also check the expiration date on the bottom of the baking powder tin…if it’s more than a year past expiration, you need to replace it.
Ingredients
¾ cup sugar, white or a mix of white and brown
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 large egg
¼ cup water
¾ cup pumpkin purée
½ cup flour
¼ tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
¾ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp Chinese 5 spice
¼ tsp allspice
¼ cup walnuts, optional
Preheat oven to 350F and lightly grease a 9 inch loaf pan.
Sift together dry ingredients and set aside.
Cream together sugar and oil, add egg, then pumpkin purée.
Add dry ingredients in small increments, along with the water, until just combined.
Bake for 40 minutes and reduce heat to 325F … after 10 more minutes begin checking for toothpick
to come up clean when inserted into center. Depending on your oven and elevation, bread will take anywhere from 50 minutes to an hour and 5 minutes.
Allow to cool for 20 minutes before turning out of pan onto wire rack where it needs to cool completely before you attempt to cut a slice!
pumpkin “bread” tea cake profile