Pumpkin Season

Um, yikes! Weddings, report cards, a few rounds of Sam's Oktoberfest, and a general lack of sleep have cut into my cooking these past couple weeks, but things finally seem to be calming down.

In all that busy-ness, fall is nearing it's end. I say this, because we've now had at least two frosts, we have our heat on, and it actually snowed in Cobleskill Friday morning.  The last few leaves are hanging on despite the rain and crisp air, so it's delicately beautiful (for the time being).

I think you can still pick apples if you want, but we're coming up on another fun season: squash. Yay!

To kick it off, I made some pumpkin bread yesterday.  As of Friday's snow and Saturday night's Young Frankenstein at Proctor's (which I highly recommend), I'm in a Halloweenie mood, and felt like warming up the apartment with something baked.  So I looked up pumpkin bread on Allrecipes.com (my fave, you know), and got this show on the road.

Here is the recipe I started with, followed by my ingredient adjustments at the end of this post.

Mix up your flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices in a bowl.

In a big humongous bowl, mix your sugar, and beaten eggs.

When it's all soupy, you can stir in the pumpkin (I used canned, it's easier).

Then, stir the dry ingredients little by little into the wet ones.  Use water to loosen it up.

By now it smells  amazinggg (like pumpkin pie), and you may find some curious visitors in your kitchen...

Here you can toss in some add-ins, like flax seed, oats, and chocolate chips!

Pour the batter into TWO loaf pans (I may have finally learned from my past experiences!).  Your visitors may barely be able to resist the deliciousness.

Garbage Cat wants to get his paws in that batter.

Cover with foil, and bake at 350.

Uncover with the foil about half-way through so the top can cook.  My loaves took about 45-60 minutes to bake (the glass pan cooked much faster).

Adjusted Ingredients List
2 cups white sugar, 1 cup brown sugar
1 cup apple sauce (replaced oil)
4 eggs, beaten
1 can of pumpkin (15 oz)
3 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. each: baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg
1/2 tsp. ginger, all-spice, baking powder
1/2 cup water
add-ins: 1 tbls. flax seed, 2 tbls. oats, 1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips



Now... how hard is pumpkin pie?