The Bouldering Competition I competed in was the day before the Harvest Celebration at Little Eorthe, so I was pretty focused on preparing to compete and hadn't planned ahead something to bring to the potluck dinner the next afternoon. Thankfully I had all the ingredients for pumpkin bread and a new recipe to test out from one of my grandma's old church cookbooks. I was hoping it turned out great because I didn't have time to make a back up, but it ended up perfectly! Oftentimes I find that breads like pumpkin bread, banana bread, etc end up with a mushy, not-as-cooked center, but this one cooked through completely perfectly and was light and fluffy but still rich and dense. If you wanted to make this more dessert-y you could add chocolate chips, or even raisins and nuts if you like! I opted for a plain ol' version with no mix-ins. I had a slice for breakfast every day this week, perfect for the amazing fall mornings we've been having!
Ingredients
3 1/2 cups flour
3 cups sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
2 cups pumpkin
1 cup oil or butter
4 eggs
2/3 cups water
1 tsp vanilla
1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Mix flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon in a large bowl. In another bowl, mix pumpkin, eggs, oil/butter, eggs, water and vanilla.
2. Pour wet ingredients into the large bowl with the dry ingredients and mix until smooth.
3. Pour into two greased + floured loaf pans (or I prefer mine lined with parchment paper instead), and bake for 1 hr, or until done. Mine needed to be baked a bit longer than 1 hr. Just bake until, when you poke a toothpick in, it comes out dry.
