PUMPKIN BREAD

If you follow my blog, you know that I absolutely love anything pumpkin. The following pumpkin bread is one I've been making for years and is one of the best recipes I've come across thus far. It's from one of my favorite sites, allrecipes.com. Whenever I am in search of a basic recipe: pancakes, banana bread, brownies, I go to allrecipes. I type in what I am looking for and sort by highest ratings and most reviews. I haven't been let down yet.

When I first made this recipe, I did what I do with any quick bread or muffin recipe - find a way to make it healthier. This usually means substituting some of the oil with applesauce, the white flour with whole wheat flour and reducing the amount of sugar. That's how I have been making this recipe over the past several years. It wasn't until a few months ago, when I made this bread for my husband's co-worker, that I actually followed the original recipe as it was published. The bread was even more amazing! In addition, I baked the cake in a 'fancy' bundt pan, simply because it made a nice presentation. What I learned is that using the entire cup of oil and all 3 cups of sugar and cooking it in my Cast Aluminum Nordic Ware Bundt Pan, created the most amazing crust on the outside of the pumpkin bread, while the inside remained ultra moist.

I generally don't give in to a lot of the silly cooking gadgets sold at high end culinary stores, but if you are a baker, investing in a good quality bundt pan is something I would highly recommend.
Following is the original recipe as it is posted on allrecipes.com. For those of you that also believe in the mantra, "everything in moderation", I have noted my healthy substitutions below.

Pumpkin Bread

1 -15 oz can pumpkin puree
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup water
3 cups white sugar
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 t baking soda
1 1/2 t salt
1 t ground cinnamon
1 t ground nutmeg
1/2 t ground cloves
1/4 t ground ginger

*Healthy Substitutions: Replace 1/2 cup of the oil with 1/2 cup of applesauce. Reduce the sugar to 2 cups. Substitute some or all of the flour with whole wheat pastry flour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans or one bundt pan.

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 and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared pan(s).

Bake for about 50 minutes for three loaf pans or 60 minutes for one bundt pan, in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.