Pumpkin Bread/cake

Tall Boy was after me for days (and periodically before that!) to make some pumpkin bread/cake with him or for him. Last year, his class made it together, and he was HOOKED on the stuff. He doesn't really like the pumpkin bread from Trader Joes (I LOVE the cranberries).

Here's the recipe we made last night:

(off of Allrecipes.com, recipe submitted by Shirley Sober)

1 cup butter or margarine, softened
3 cups sugar
3 eggs (we used large)
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1.5 teaspoons baking soda
 16 oz can of pumpkin puree (we used a can of pumpkin already flavored for pie)
Spices: 1.5 tsps ground cinnamon
1.5 tsps ground cloves
1.5 tsps ground nutmeg
We didn't add the spices because it was already in the puree

Cream the butter and sugar together in a large mixing bowl. Add the eggs, and mix well.
Combine the dry ingredients, stir into the butter/sugar/egg mixture until moistened (as if you were making muffins)
Stir in the pumpkin puree.
Pour into two greased 9x5x3 inch loaf pans.
Bake at 350F for ~1 hour until bread tests done.

Okay, we don't have pans to those measurements, so I bought foil pans at Target that are 8x4x3, and ended up using three of them.
I baked the bread for 50 minutes at 350 in our small oven since our large one is still broken. The outside crust was deeply browned, but WHOA! You know what happened? Because of all the sugar in this recipe, the crust *carmelized* and was actually sweeter than the bread itself.

Make sure the butter is well-integrated into the sugar. I used a hand mixer, but it didn't shred the butter up as small as it could have, and so there are weird buttery sections of the bread. It's not too bad, although Mermaid did get a piece which "tasted weird" and she didn't like it; but the next piece she had was much better.

And that's it! Very simple recipe, doesn't use ANY oils, which is good....I wonder if you can substitute some of the butter with apple sauce, though.

 

cameradrool

Well, the Guy borrowed my little Nikon 5x zoom pocket camera last week, and has neglected to return it. Since my birthday is coming up soon (nextweekomgIwillbefortysix!) I decided that my main present is going to be a Canon 14x zoom 14mb pocket camera. I feel naked without a camera in my purse, so I can take quick pictures of, for instance, large pink Hummers on the road, or maybe a Dodger's Fan Car--I'll post those once I obscure the license plate numbers off them. Yes, a bright pink Hummer. Like, Mary Kay Pink.