On my first day of Homemade Christmas, I bring to you, Pumpkin Bread
You may be wondering why I am starting my 12 days of homemade Christmas off with Pumpkin Bread when it is a delicious fall treat. The answer is simple, pumpkin bread is delicious year round so why not?
Pumpkin bread was added to my list of holiday treats back when my boys were all still in elementary school. After we moved to New Jersey I had my first run-in with the perfect mom types. We all know the type. I lived in a well to do area of New Jersey. My family lived maybe 5 minutes away from Trump National Golf Club and in the same town as celebrities such as Queen Latifah, Bruce Springsteen and more. I would go to the store and count the number of Hermes/Birkin bags I would see. I lived in Monmouth County, NJ, what many know as the Jersey shore and we lived on a Navy base in the middle of it.
New Jersey grew on me but I wasn’t like the majority of the other mom’s at my kid’s school. One of the ways was I couldn’t afford the same type of teacher gifts that the other moms gave their child’s teacher. It wasn’t just buying 3 teacher gifts either. As a mom of a special needs kid, not just one teacher to shop for but a crew of teacher aides and therapists. I would need 20 teacher gifts.
I don’t care who you are but that is a lot of gifts and I wasn’t going to be the only parent that did not give their child’s teacher a gift. After some thinking, I had a lightbulb moment. The teachers and aids liked my baking and it was something I could do well so I decided I could gift them homemade treats, so I did and this pumpkin bread was a huge hit!
I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have made this pumpkin bread over the years. It is the perfect pumpkin bread and makes great muffins too! An added plus is it can be made gluten-free just by subbing some gluten-free flour. You can even up the wow factor by adding chocolate chips. It is the only pumpkin bread recipe you will ever need.
Try it for yourself and let me know what you think!
Check out my entire 2017 Homemade Christmas Collection
- 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup vegetable oil (applesauce can be substituted)
- ⅔ cup water
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or paste
- 3 cups white sugar
- 3½ cups all-purpose flour (gluten free flour can be used)
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1½ teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon ground cloves
- ¼ teaspoon ground ginger
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans.
- In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil,vanilla, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared pans.
- Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
- For muffins- Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Fill baking cups ½-2/3 full. Bake 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
Recipe from Allrecipes.com
