Pumpkin Bread

There are few things I love more than the first weeks of fall.  Brian likes to tease me because he knows that soon I will be complaining about the cold weather and ready for Summer.  

It's true, I am a fickle Floridian.

But I can't help it.  After a long hot summer, there is nothing like those first cool, crisp mornings.

And, of course, it's pumpkin weather.  Ah, the pumpkin.  What's not to love, I ask you.  They are a well-rounded, vegetable.  (Yeah, I did.)

Pumpkin decorations, pumpkin baked goods, pumpkin coffees, pumpkin seeds, smashing pumpkins...

I know that Starbucks is pretty exclusively known for the PSL this time of year, (have you read this yet?) but I am here to tell you about the pumpkin bread.

Holy cow, the pumpkin bread.  It is a-mah-zing.  So delicious.  They really shouldn't call it bread.  It's cake.  It's pumpkin cake.  It's a-maz-ing, (it bears repeating.)

So, in honor of pumpkin-palooza, I took to Google in search of the perfect copycat Starbucks recipe.  Let me tell you, I was not the first person to have this idea, Google turned up 165,000 search results.

I settled on Food.com's version.  I was drawn to it because it used whole wheat flour as well as all-purpose, less sugar than most of the other recipes, and apple sauce to cut back on the vegetable oil.

So, here it is, my first attempt to take down the Starbucks Monopoly on Pumpkin Bread.
 

1 cup sugar & 1 cup brown sugar

That seems like a lot of sugar, doesn't it?  This recipe yields 2 loaves of pumpkin bread though, so stop freaking out, it's basically sugar-free.  

(Don't quote me on that.)

1/2 cup vegetable oil

Start out by beating the sugar and oil together until well-blended.  Next mix in your eggs, pumpkin and applesauce.  

3 large eggs

 I like to buy Vegetarian eggs, which Brian thinks is really funny.  But chickens should just not not be vegetarian.  So, once I knew they were out there, I really had no choice but to buy Vegetarian eggs.

1/2 cup applesauce

1 {15 oz.} can solid pack pumpkin

I learned recently that solid pack pumpkin is just plain 'ole pumpkin.  But I like this new, fancy name.

Once your eggs, applesauce and pumpkin are well-blended, sift together your dry ingredients in a large bowl.

1.5 cups all-purpose flour, 1.5 cups whole-
wheat flour, 8 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice,
1 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt,
and 1/2 tsp baking powder

Confession:  I love sifting.

I subbed Pumpkin Pie Spice here for several other spices that the food.com recipe called for.  Only because I would have had to buy more than 1 of the other spices, and Pumpkin Pie Spice already has everything in it.  Do what you gotta do, y'all.

Next, slowly add the dry ingredients into your wet ingredients.

Confession:  I love my Kitchen-Aid Stand Mixer.  Hands down, my favorite wedding present, (thanks, Mom!)

So, your batter should be ready to go now.  Here's a fun trick I've learned from watching Giada:

Cut strips of parchment paper and pour the batter over the paper...like this:

Because then...

After 1 hour @ 350° you can do this:

Boom.  Seriously, things like this make your life so much easier that you stop and say, "that was awesome."  Just lift the loaf out of the pan after letting it cool for 5 minutes.

I baked the leftover batter in large muffin tins for 25 minutes @ 350°.

And there you have it!  I have to say...this is pretty delicious.

It's not exactly like the Starbucks version, (which I still think you should try,) but I do think you should try this, too.  It's awesome.  Try it with toasted with cream cheese.  Oh, man.

I love pumpkin season.

You can find the original recipe here.