Monday, September 28, 2015

recipe: pumpkin bread


so, here's the deal. I love baking with pumpkin. Well, really I love pumpkin anything- lattes, cookies, soup, bread, curry, pie obviously...

Over the past several years I have become increasingly frustrated, scouring the internet for recipes that don't list "once can of pumpkin" in their ingredient list.

Now, to be clear, I have nothing against canned pumpkin. It's just I live in Germany, where things like canned pumpkin, or pumpkin pie spice are hard to come by. 

So I've adapted and developed my own recipe, using what I can readily find here. I thought I would share it here in case anyone out there can relate to my pumpkin predicament. 

you will need:


  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup baked hokkaido pumpkin (approximately half of a small-medium sized hokkaido pumpkin. You're going to want to pre bake this) note: if you can't find hokkaido pumpkin, another sort of baking pumpkin should do fine.
  • 3/4 cup oil (olive or sunflower seed oil work well)
  • 1-2 tbsp of cold water, as needed (to thin mixture)
  • 1 3/4 cups flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 3/4 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp of each of the following: ground cloves, nutmeg, powdered ginger



1. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees C. Use butter to grease a loaf pan (13x9 inches). 

2. Crack both eggs into a medium sized bowl and beat with a fork. Add your sugar and oil and combine. 

3. Peel your baked pumpkin and mash it with a fork. Add to your mixture and beat rigorously until the clumps have mostly blended in.

4. In a separate, smaller bowl mix together your flour, baking powder, salt and spices. Add this in with the pumpkin mixture. At this point, you're going to want a dough that's quite liquid-y and not at all sticky. If your's is not, feel free to add a tablespoon or two of water to thin it down. 

5. Bake for 40-50 mins, until the top is golden brown. I always do the toothpick test with this bread- just insert a toothpick and if it comes out clean then your bread is done! 

6. Let it cool in the pan for about 5 mins and then transfer to a cooling rack.


And that's it. If I'm being completely honest with myself, this is more like cake than bread. Feel free to experiment with the recipe and add toppings- I think walnuts would be good and chocolate would be excellent. You could also add raisins if you're into that sort of thing. I also debated making a simple icing for the top; using powdered sugar and perhaps adding the spices to it as well. Then it really would be a cake. Yum!


3 comments:

  1. thank you! It is that time of the year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you so much for sharing, Ruthie! I have the exact same problem here in Norway. After having lived in Edinburgh for many years, and having canned pumpkin readily available, I find it so sad that I can't bake anything pumpkin-related as easily anymore. I'll definitely be trying your recipe this autumn :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. oh this makes me so happy- exactly why I shared the recipe. I hope you'll enjoy it :)

      Delete