Cranberry Pumpkin Loaf

I love everything pumpkin and any excuse to use pumpkin! And my new favorite combination is pumpkin and cranberry. The earthy, deep flavor of pumpkin combined with the fresh, tart pop of the cranberries in this pumpkin loaf is so unexpected. Festive enough for New Years dessert! 

What you will need:

½ cup canola oil (or 1 stick unsalted butter)

1 cup pumpkin puree (recipe for homemade here)

1 cup loosely packed light brown sugar

¼ cup maple syrup

1 tsp vanilla bean paste (or extract)

2 large eggs

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 ½ tsp pumpkin pie spice

¾ tsp kosher salt

½ tsp baking soda

½ cup frozen cranberries

2 tbsp turbinado sugar

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a loaf pan with parchment paper and grease, or grease a loaf pan and dust with flour.

Combine the oil, pumpkin, brown sugar, maple syrup, vanilla and eggs in a large bowl. Whisk until smooth.

Whisk together the all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, salt and baking soda in a separate bowl. When I don’t have whole wheat flour on hand, I use all-purpose flour and it works well too.

Add the dry to the wet ingredients and whisk until smooth (but don't overmix).

Scrape into the loaf pan and smooth the top with a rubber spatula. Press cranberries into the top and sprinkle with turbinado sugar.

Bake for 50-55 minutes, until the top is browned and crusty, and a toothpick inserted in comes out clean. Let cool.

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Challah

I love everything pumpkin! I also love playing with new challah creations. All it takes is a few tweaks to my staple challah recipe.

I have been on a challah kick and a pumpkin kick lately. Who said pumpkin is reserved just for Fall? Not me! I love pumpkin all year, whether it’s a savory dish like pumpkin soup or pie or sweet like pumpkin ice cream, cake, cookies...I could go on and on.

You can definitely used can pumpkin purée, just make sure it’s one where it’s just pumpkin on the ingredients, not a pie filling that has other ingredients added in. I use pie pumpkins that I roast and purée my own, check out my how to here. 

What you will need:

2 tbsp yeast

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup warm water

1 cup pumpkin purée {make your own here}

1/3 cup oil

2 eggs

1 tsp salt

2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

4-4 1/2 cups flour

Directions: 

In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the yeast, sugar, water, and pumpkin purée, stir to combine. Add the 2 eggs and mix the eggs with a beater attachment. Then add the oil and mix together again. 

With the mixer on the lowest speed, add flour cup by cup until the dough starts forming a ball and pulling away from the sides of the mixing bowl. At this point, swap out the beater attachment for a dough hook and add the salt and pumpkin pie spice. Keep adding flour cup by cup until the dough is no longer sticky to the touch. In total this should be roughly 4 cups of flour. 

Knead the dough together by hand to make sure everything is incorporated together. 

Place the dough back in the bowl and cover the top of the dough with a thin layer of oil and cover with a wet towel. 

 Let the dough rise until it doubles in size, this should be about an hour, or in the fridge up to 24 hours. 

Punch the dough down and let it rise for another hour. 

At this point, you are ready to form the challahs. I like to do simple 4 strand braids. 

Once all of your challahs are formed, let them rise for an additional half hour, or up to an hour in colder weather. 

Top each challah with egg wash (one egg with a little bit of water) and some pumpkin seeds and cinnamon sugar if you want it sweet. 

Bake at 350°F for 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

Dreamy Pumpkin Bread

Have I said lately how much I love pumpkin? In case you missed it…I LOVE PUMPKIN! I don’t think I will ever get sick of it.

With that said, I want to share my pumpkin bread recipe. It started out as my banana bread recipe when I first made it a few years ago. This weekend a light bulb went off in my head as I was trying to think of new ways to incorporate pumpkin in my life….I can substitute mashed bananas for my pumpkin puree! I absolutely love Starbucks pumpkin bread, but at $2.25 a slice and some 300+ calories later I always regret it. My version has less than half the calories per slice and I can eat it more often {more pumpkin=more happy.} 

What you will need:

1 ½ cups flour
1 ¼ tsps. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp. salt
2 slightly beaten egg whites
1 cup pumpkin puree
¾ cup sugar
¼ cup canola oil
Nonstick spray
8x4x2” Loaf pan

 
In a medium mixing bowl stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.

In a large mixing bowl whisk together egg whites, pumpkin, sugar, and oil. 

Stir flour mixture into pumpkin mixture until well incorporated.

Liberally spray a loaf pan with nonstick spray {you do not want your bread to stick to the pan, so really spray it!} Spread batter into pan and bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Let the bread cool in the loaf pan for 10 minutes to set up. It was so hard not to take it out and have a taste of it at this point!

Remove from the pan and let cool thoroughly. Wrap in plastic wrap for storing.

Enjoy!