Picture this: it's early in the morning on a Sunday in the summer, but it's chillier than normal outside for whatever reason. You wake up and it's only 64 degrees in your house. The kids are cold, the gas fireplace pilot for some reason goes out so you can't turn on your fire place, and there is no way in H-E-Double Hockey Sticks that you're turning your furnace on in August! What do you do to heat the house? You bake pumpkin bread, that's what!
The above scenario is what went down in my house (we're still looking into that fireplace issue-Argh!!!). And I may catch some flak for this recipe because "it's not Fall yet," and "why can't we just enjoy summer?!" But I don't care. Pumpkin is actually really good for you and not just in the Fall, but year round, so why not bake with it in August or July or whenever you please!
I've used about 6 different recipes making pumpkin breads over the years and I've kind of made my own at this point. I like mine because:
1. It's super easy
2. It's super delicious
This will take just over an hour to bake, so if you have to be somewhere in an hour, save this for another day.
And of course, I added chocolate chips because they just make everything better in my opinion. There's not enough stuff with chocolate in it in this world. I wonder if chocolate would taste good on a hamburger? Hmmmm...
Anyway, the ingredients are stuff I usually have lying around in the pantry. Admittedly, I bought the can of pumpkin earlier in the week. Heck, if you're really feeling adventurous and want to really do it all from scratch, you could buy a Sugar Pumpkin (this is NOT the same as a pumpkin you carve for Halloween) and bake it, then scoops the insides for this bread recipe - BUT WHO HAS TIME FOR THAT?! Not me. Not today anyway.
Here's what you'll need:
3 1/4 cups all purpose flour
3 cups of granulated sugar
2 tsp of baking soda (make sure your baking soda isn't too old or else you won't get a good rise)
1 tsp of salt (I actually forget to put salt in when I was baking mine and it turned out fine)
1 tbsp of cinnamon
1 tsp of nutmeg
1 tsp of cloves (I LOVE the scent of cloves)
2 cups of pumpkin puree (I think it's a 15 oz can)
1/2 cup of water
1/2 cup melted unsalted butter
1/2 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
Optional: 1 cup chocolate chips and/or 1 cup of chopped walnuts
Here's what you have to do:
1. Heat your oven to 325 degrees F if you're using a convection oven. If you're using conventional, then heat to 350 F.
2. Throw all the ingredients in a stand mixer minus the optional ingredients and let it mix til everything is well combined. It took maybe 3-4 minutes. If you're using a hand mixer, it will take a bit longer. Add the optional ingredients if you choose now then mix again for a few seconds.
3. Spray two 9"x4" OR three 7"x3" loaf pans loaf pans with PAM for Baking. You could use cupcake pans for this as well if you want to make muffins - use liners.
4. Scoop, spoon, or ladle your batter into your prepared pans.
5. Bake! I used two 9"x4" pans and a convection oven. It took about 1 hour and 10 minutes. The 7"x3" pans would be about an hour. The cupcake pans would take about 15-18 minutes.
6. EAT! This bread is delicious warm. It needs no butter or other topping. It's so good!
I hope you like this recipe as much as me and my family do. I'm about to go snag another slice right now!
