In the spirit of Halloween and fall I've been craving pumpkin anything. So I found a recipe and tweaked it to my liking. I meant to take a picture of it, but it disappeared before I remembered. It was good bread, very moist, and had a great flavor.
Pumpkin Bread
1 (15 oz) can pumpkin puree
4 eggs
1/3 cup oil
2/3 cup applesauce (plain or cinnamon)
2/3 cup water
3 cups sugar
3 ½ - 4 ½ cups flour*
2 tsp. Baking soda
1 ½ tsp. Salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
½ tsp ground cloves
¼ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp pumpkin pie spice
2/3 cup chocolate chips – optional
1 cup chopped nuts – optional
2/3 cup raisins – optional
¼ cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1. Preheat oven to 300. Mix ¼ cup sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon together. Grease 3 7x3 pans, and sprinkle with sugar mixture.
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger and pumpkin pie spice. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Add optional ingredients if wanted and mix. Pour into the prepared pans. (I made 2 loaves because I have larger pans and ended up with not quite enough to make a third loaf so I out the extra batter in muffin tins a baked them that way, they baked for about 25 minutes, but checked them regularly so as to not burn them. They were great muffins!)
3. Baking time will vary, but generally it should bake for an hour. Check at 50 minutes, loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Yields 3 loaves.
*Flour and baking time depends on elevation, lower elevation uses less flour as well as less baking time. I bake at the elevation of 4500 and used the full 4 ½ cups and baked for over an hour.
**For a lower calorie recipe, substitute remaining oil for all applesauce, and use 5 egg whites instead of 4 whole eggs.
