Pumpkin bread (vegan and other variations)
Pumpkin bread
Deliciously seasonal and with lots of chocolate.
I know, I know, it’s December already and everyone is thinking “Christmas!” and baking cookies. But I just had the chance to try out this recipe and had to share it. Besides, if you get the last of November’s pumpkins, they can be kept fresh at room temperature up to a month, so you could enjoy fresh pumpkin bread in December, too.
Now the recipe calls for pumpkin puree and I didn’t know how to make it freshly at home (instead of buying a can) so here’s the quick process for you, just in case you’re a kitchen-noob like me:
Cut the pumpkin in half and remove seeds – but don’t throw them away! You can rinse the seeds and boil them in salt-water, then roast them in the oven at 200ºC for about 10 minutes – they make a very healthy snack.
Put the pumpkin cut side down on a baking sheet (lined with parchment paper if you like). Bake at 165 ºC for 30 to 40 minutes, until the flesh is soft. Let it cool and then scrape the pumpkin flesh from the peel; then either mash or puree the flesh in a blender.
Now if you’re doing this right before baking the bread, you can prepare the other mixtures while the pumpkin is in the oven and just adjust the oven temperature
Ingredients:
225g all-purpose flour (or your gluten-free equivalent)
¼ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
¾ tsp baking powder
¼ cup brown sugar
¾ cup white sugar
2 eggs (or ½ cup egg whites/vegan egg-substitute)
60ml oil or 57g butter (or ¼ cup apple sauce)
250ml pumpkin puree (I used a whole medium-sized hokkaido pumpkin)
½ tsp vanilla (I used a package of vanillin sugar)
chocolate chips (I used a package of nice big “milk-chocolate chunks”)
*100ml vanilla Greek yogurt (I left this out, and loved the result, you can probably substitute it with soy-yogurt as well)
Preparation:
Preheat oven to 176ºC.
Combine flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, baking powder and baking soda.
In another bowl, mix the white and brown sugar together.
Then add *yogurt, eggs, pumpkin puree, apple sauce and vanilla.
Mix dry and wet ingredients together.
Fold in chocolate chips.
Bake for 50 minutes in a loaf pan.
Now, with all the substitutions and conversions, putting too much pumpkin and leaving out the yogurt my mixture turned out a little runny. I didn’t add any more flour, so the bread didn’t turn out as fluffy as I expected, but it still tastes amazing. You trust your cooking instincts to tweak the recipe as you wish. Enjoy it with a glass of milk – or your favorite milk-substitute.