Everything Pumpkin

Fall is one of my favorite times and part of the reason is I love pumpkin, the flavor of pumpkin that is!  I had two organic Colorado pie pumpkins sitting in the garage just waiting to be used - oh they were so patient, but it was time.

First, I roasted the pumpkins.

After they cooled,  I carefully cleaned all the pulp out and sent the skins to the compost pile.

Second, I roasted the pumpkin seeds.

I've always played with the best way to roast seeds and I think Camilla over at "Enlightened Cooking" has figured out the secret.  I followed her steps for Roasting Pumpkin Seeds, found here.  The key was to make sure they were plenty dry before hand.  More please!

Finally, well not for the pumpkin, but for this blog post, I had the dream of good Pumpkin Bread floating around in my head.  Elise at Simple Recipes, put that dream in my head with her posting for Pumpkin Gingerbread.  Unfortunately, I didn't print it out when I first saw it and on the day I was going to make it we had an Internet outage.  I'm not talking a 10 minute outage, I'm talking our Internet was out for 22 hours.  Wow, that really made me realize how much I use the Internet!  So I had to make up my own recipe, with that idea in my head.

This was a very successful recipe.  I took a recipe from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book and made some changes. This made one loaf, which is good, we did not need two of these evil and oh so yummy pumpkin bread loaves to eat!

Pumpkin Bread (Based on King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking recipe)

This recipe is typed from the book, with my changes below.
2 cups (8 ounces) whole wheat flour, traditional or white whole wheat
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup (1 stick, 4 ounces) unsalted butter
1 cup (7 1/2 ounces) packed brown sugar
1/4 cup (1 3/4 ounces) granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (9 1/2 ounces) canned pumpkin
3/4 cup (3 ounces) chopped nuts (optional)
3/4 cup (4 1/2 ounces) raisins, dried cranberries, or chocolate chips (optional)

Christine's Changes:

• I amped up all the spices a bit and added 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger.
• For the sugar, I added 1/4 cup molasses and only 2/3 cup unrefined, organic sugar.  It's brown, so that should work, right? 
• I had a very healthy cup of pumpkin, probably closer to 1 1/4 cup.
• I added nuts, but no chips or raisins.
• I only had 6 tablespoons butter, so I added 2 tablespoons olive oil.

Only one more change, but how many of you are like - why bother making the recipe if she's going to change it so much?  Where's the challenge in making a recipe with no chance of failure?  :)

• Flour - I used a mix of whole wheat, brown rice, and quinoa flour.  I've been trying to cut down on wheat to figure out if it's causing some stomach issues, but as you can tell, I'm not ready to give it up yet!

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 9x5 loaf pan.
2. Whisk together the dry ingredients, flour through spices.
3. Cream together the butter and sugars until light and fluffy.  Beat in the eggs, one at a time, stopping to scrape the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl.  Beat in the vanilla and pumpkin.  Add the dry ingredients, mixing until evenly moistened.  Stir in any optional ingredients.
4. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.  Bake until a cake tester (known in my kitchen as a toothpick) comes out clean, about 1 hour.  Remove the bread from the oven and place it on a rack to cool for 15 minutes.  After 15 minutes, run a table knife around the edges of the pan to make sure the bread isn't sticking, turn it out of the pan, and place on the rack to finish cooling completely before slicing. 

I can verify that the world doesn't end if you slice before the bread is completely cooled.  What's the point if you don't get to enjoy a nice warm slice of bread?

 A piece of fresh Pumpkin Ginger Bread with a drizzle of honey and butter.  Yum!