Me in Place

Pumpkin Bread Obsession ’08 is coming to a close (just in time for Postseason Cubs Obsession ’08!), as I’ve made every recipe I had for Pumpkin Bread. So, I decided to give you the low-down, so you can decide which one to make for yourselves. I wish I could make bread for each and every one of you. But, unfortunately, I don’t think it ships well to “Unknown.” And if you’re a lurker on my blog, really, how can I feed you if I know not from whence thou comest? (Comment, already, scaredy cat.) Except for you, creepy person, don’t bother commenting. Oh, wait, is that you?

Here is the rundown:

First recipe came with the fancy shmancy pumpkin bread loaf pan from Williams Sonoma.

The name of the recipe is Orange Spice Pumpkin Bread.There is ginger in the recipe, and you do taste this zing of ginger as you eat it.

You can link to the recipe HERE

Pros: Kids and I liked it; smelled delicious while baking; looked cute in the new pan

Cons: Many ingredients, including orange zest, which I do not always have on hand.

Second recipe came from: The Joy of Cooking and they cleverly titled their recipe Pumpkin Bread.(I won’t post the recipe, since it’s theirs, but if you want it, just check this book out of the library or buy it.)

Pros: Very, Very pumpkin-y tasting and delicious. Kids did not like it because of the too much pumpkin taste. This would be the one to make if you want pumpkin pie in a pumpkin bread.

Cons: The most labor intensive recipe to make. And, since I typically do not like to bake (too much measuring), I was nigh unto boredom.It also had these little bubbles in it that didn’t affect the recipe, but didn’t look quite as pretty coming out of the fancy shmancy pan.

Third recipe is an old standby from Dinner by Design, called Pumpkin Bars. I found an almost identical recipe on Paula Deen’s site at Food Network.This was SuperBoy’s favorite – mainly because of the sugar frosting.

Pros: Super easy to mix; the frosting is a cream cheese frosting and is very yummy.

Cons: Since you frost it, you can’t use your cute new Pumpkin pan from Williams Sonoma. Well, I guess you could and then you could recite “The frost is on the pun’kin…” by Robert Frost.

And the fourth was my personal favorite, because I didn’t even have to make it! Awesome blog reader, Janet, made this one for me. This one is Kirstin Kapustik’s Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cake. Kirstin doesn’t even mess around with pretending it’s bread, she just goes ahead and calls it like it is, Cake. Although, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to rename it “MIP Thanks Janet for Her Generosity.”

Add that chocolate into the pumpkin goodness and you have yourself a winner. Yum-a-licious.  I apologize for not having a fancier dish for this picture… it’s just that by the time I could even get my camera on this loaf, we had eaten almost all of it. Here is the link.

Pros: Someone else makes it for you, if you’re lucky. Very tasty.

Cons: After feeding it to the kids for breakfast, you discover it’s called cake and then you feel guilty as a mom and then, to ease the guilt, you eat more of the cake.

The fifth, and hopefully last, Pumpkin Bread recipe is from Paula Deen’s cookbook “Lady & Sons Savannah Cookbook.”Sorry I have no link to the recipe. You’ll have to buy the book.

Pros: Easy ingredients. The cookbook this comes from is FULL of great recipes, that I make all the time. The recipe makes two loafs, so you only have to measure once for twice the goodness, that’s my kind of baking.

Cons: I’d like a little more of a taste of pumpkin to come through.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.