Pumpkin Loaf

Consider this a continuation of last night's pumpkin post. As mentioned previously, I've been craving a good pumpkin quick bread. After conducting extensive scientific research in order to locate the perfect recipe, I decided on smittenkitchen's pumpkin muffin recipe. With my own tweaks, of course. I obviously changed it to a loaf recipe, omitted the cinnamon sugar topping, and because I refuse to spend money on "pumpkin pie spice" when I already have all the individual ingredients on my spice rack, I changed -- and increased -- the spices. I like my autumn cakes/muffins with lots of spices, but not to the point of overkill.

As a habitual over-mixer of muffin/quick bread batters, I really liked Deb's advice in her post:

A large wire whisk, when mixing by hand, really allows you to incorporate all of the drying ingredients quickly without mashing them up too much. It’s made it much harder to overdo it, despite my better efforts.

I found this to be totally true. Despite my efforts to gently fold in the flour, I've always unintentionally over-mixed my muffins and quick breads, leaving them to fall flat (literally) or become a giant sinkhole. This whisk thing sure does the trick!

Pumpkin Loaf
adapted from smittenkitchen.com

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup pure pumpkin puree
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a 9"x5" loaf pan or baking dish.
2. Whisk together the pumpkin, oil, eggs, spices, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl until smooth and thoroughly combined.
3. Whisk in the flour and baking powder just until combined. Pour the batter into your loaf pan/baking dish, and bake until golden brown and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, about 1 hour.

That last picture is the most flattering photo I could take of the finished product. I had a minor disaster while turning the loaf out of the pan -- things were not pretty (including the string of swear words that came out of my mouth in the process). But, although it doesn't look pretty, it is darn tasty, and that's all that matters. :)

Cheers,
L