Pumpkin Bread and Perfection

This is one of the best easy quick recipes for pumpkin bread is a quick bread. It means you simply blend all the ingredients together, put the batter in the pan, and bake it in the oven. Since yeast is not among the ingredients, you don’t need to wait for the dough to rise. Instead, baking soda is used in this recipe as a leavening agent to help the dough rise as it bakes. This recipe is adapted from The Recipe Hall of Fame Cookbook II, Perfect Pumpkin Bread. It is loaded with delicious flavors, aromatic spices, and makes an unforgettable breakfast, snack or dessert.

Flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg, butterscotch pudding, lemon pudding, and vanilla extract, this sumptuous recipe not only tastes like heaven. It also smells divine. It is rich, soft, and quite addicting. You need pumpkin puree to make perfect pumpkin bread, which you can easily make at home. Pumpkin puree is commercially available. They are typically sold in cans. However, it is still best to use fresh pumpkin puree especially when it is not too difficult to make.

The puree can be made ahead of time. All you need to do is cook the pumpkin until tender. Then puree it in the blender. There are many ways you can cook pumpkin. You can steam, boil, bake, grill, or roast the pumpkin until it becomes soft to the point of being mushy. To make the pumpkin cook faster, you can peel and slice the vegetable into smaller pieces and then steam them. In this case steaming is better than boiling since it will not leech out the flavor of the pumpkin and retain most of its nutrients. Also a great way and convenient method to soften the pumpkin and bring out its natural sweetness is baking. Do not add any seasoning like salt when cooking the pumpkin for pureeing, since you will be seasoning the dough later on.

Ingredients

2 ½ cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ginger

1 package (3 ½ oz.) butterscotch instant pudding

1 package (3 ½ oz.) lemon instant pudding

5 eggs

1 ½ cups granulated sugar

1 ½ cups vegetable oil

2 cups (1 lb.) pumpkin puree

3 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease two 8 ½ x 4 ½ in loaf pans. Set aside.

2. Stir together the flour, soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and puddings in a large mixing bowl.

3. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl. Then add the sugar, oil, pumpkin, and vanilla. Gradually add to the flour mixture and stir until just moistened.

4. Pour into the prepared loaf pans. Bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven. For 10 minutes allow to stay in the pan. Then turn upside down onto a wire rack to cool.