I was in the mood to do a little baking this weekend, so I pulled out mom’s pumpkin bread recipe. I haven’t made it in ages and I completely forgot how delicious it is. I’ve tried several other recipes from all over the internet, and nothing compares to mom’s.
This recipe is pretty nostalgic for me–my mom would bake pumpkin bread using this recipe every holiday season during my childhood. It had been awhile since I made it myself, so I had forgotten some of the nuances of the recipe.
This recipe makes plenty of pumpkin bread! I usually use a combination of standard 8×4 bread pans and mini loaf pans, so it varies how many of each I end up with. This time I ended up with 2 regular loaves and 3 mini loaves.
Of course, nothing goes according to plan. It’s Murphy’s law that something has to go wrong or as in my case realizing halfway through that I didn’t have any ground cloves. After pulling out everything from the baking cabinet and the spice cabinet just to make sure, I was resigned to going to the store to get some. I should have taken that as a sign to pay attention to what I was doing but alas…
It probably wasn’t the best idea to try to organize the baking cabinet and attempt to help my daughter figure out why her sewing machine was having a stroke in the middle of her sewing project while I was trying to bake. Needless to say, I was a bit distracted while I was making the pumpkin bread and forgot to add in the ginger and the raisins. But it still tasted delicious, so if you aren’t a fan of raisins or like a little less spice in your baking, feel free to leave things out or adjust to your tastes. It ended up working out great despite the chaos.
Pumpkin Bread
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter softened
- 3 2/3 cups sugar
- 6 eggs
- 15 oz canned pumpkin
- 1 cup water
- 4 1/3 cups flour
- 3 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp salt
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- 2-3 tsp cinnamon to taste
- 1 1/2 tsp ground cloves
- 1/2 tsp ginger optional
- 1 cup raisins optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350.
- Grease bread pans.
- Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.
- Stir in eggs, pumpkin, & water.
- In another bowl, sift dry ingredients including spices. Mix into wet ingredients.
- Stir in raisins. Transfer to bread pans filling approximately 2/3 full.
- Bake at 350 checking 8x4 pans after approximately 45 minutes. May take additional time (up to 60 minutes). Check with wooden toothpick or bamboo skewer. When it comes out clean, bread is done. Mini loaves will take between 20-30 minutes.
