I decided to go through an old recipe box that I had. Since my trip to Minnesota and Wisconsin, I seem to want to bake a few things. I do not have a sweet tooth, but my mom does and so does my husband. I realized that when I baked the molasses cookies at my mom’s house, I have not baked anything sweet in a very long time. I couldn’t tell you when the last times was that I actually baked cookies. Maybe eight years or ten years.
Looks good....tastes good too!
So through the recipe box I went finding and remembering things I haven’t looked at in a long long time. Most of the things are written in my writing because I went through old family recipes and re-wrote them for my box. At the time I was really into the colored calligraphy pens.
I still have a few cans of pumpkin in the cupboard so when I saw the recipe for pumpkin bread, I thought it was just the thing to make.
The ingredients were simple and I had everything on hand
Pumpkin Bread
- 4 Eggs, beaten
- 3 cups Sugar
- 1 cup salad Oil
- 2 cups Pumpkin
- 2/3 cup water
- 2 tsp Baking Soda
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp Cinnamon
- 1 tsp Nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp ground Ginger
- 3 1/2 cups Flour
Mix together beaten eggs, sugar, salad oil and pumpkin.
Sift together dry ingredients.
Add dry ingredients alternating with water.
Divide into 2 large greased loaf pans and 1 smaller greased loaf pan.
Bake 350F for 1 hour.
Pumpkin, eggs, sugar and oil mixture
Reading through recipe, I imagine “salad oil” is vegetable oil. I do not have any vegetable oil in the house. My choices were between olive oil and coconut oil. I decided to use the extra virgin coconutoil that I ordered from Tropical Traditions.
The sifter took to much time to use
As I was using my sifter I realized there has to be a quicker way so I switched to a wire mesh strainer and things went a lot faster.
This sifter worked better
I didn’t know how much to fill the loaf pans, so I did what I have done with other recipes – filled them half full. That filled two normal-sized loaf pans for me, no need for the addition small loaf pan. The bread did take longer to cook in my oven. I continued to cook the bread until a toothpick came out clean i the center.
Going in the oven
The pumpkin bread turned out wonderful. I let it cool for a few hours, but I still found it too soft to cut into slices. It cut a lot better after it was in the refrigerator and cold.
I will definitely make this bread again and add some chopped nuts to the mix. I can also see adding chopped dates or raisins to this bread too. I would even try baking it into muffins. I used canned pumpkin for this recipe, but I will try it using pumpkin that I cooked and froze last fall and I will add clove to this recipe and increase the amounts of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg to bump up the flavor more.
Sincerely, Emily
What a lovely step by step post. I use the sifter thing just for sprinkling flour over the worktop when working with dough and I always use a sieve to sift flour and icing (confectioners) sugar. I saw American canned pumpkin in the shops the other day and wondered what one could use if for, apart from pie, now I know! This looks excellent and very autumnal. If you get bored with these sweet breads (you said you didn’t have that much of a sweet tooth) can I recommend a lovely cheese and bacon bit bread raised with baking powder that is fast and yummy too? I wrote about one here http://zebbakes.com/2010/10/11/cheese-and-bacon-quick-bread/
I recently made pop overs and loved them. Just found a recipe for corn & chive pop overs that I NEED to try. Now here you are tempting me with a cheese and bacon bread. OH MY GOSH! It looks wonderful. I would eat the whole loaf (that is dangerous). Thank you.
I wish I did not have a sweet tooth like you 🙂
This bread sounds yummy and am going to have to try it.
This pumpkin bread is not super sweet. It is very moist and I thought it was nice.