Pumpkin Bread

OK, so I'm a little lazy, and haven't taken any pictures, I did however, just bake twelve loaves of pumpkin bread to give as presents to the day care staff who helps take care of my girls. The recipe comes out of an older(1968 edition) Betty Crocker cookbook, in their Quick Breads section. I mostly followed the recipe. I'm usually pretty good at following a recipe exactly the first time I make it, to see how they think it should turn out, and then waiting until subsequent forays to make my own twists to the recipe. Wasn't able to do that this time around though, as I was lacking certain of the ingredients, and had to adapt on the fly.

The recipe calls for 2/3 cup of shortening. You just know something is good when it calls for shortening, it may not be good for you, but you know it's going to taste delicious. I've got a recipe for waffles out of that same cookbook that calls for shortening in the batter, and they're just the best waffles ever :) Anyway, back to the story. So the recipe calls for shortening, I go to the pantry looking for my Crisco, and fail to find it :( My wife asks me what I'm all in a tizzy over not being able to find, and when I point out the distinct lack of shortening in the pantry, she recalls that she used it in a recipe last week that she took for her co-workers.

So, luckily, I've got butter. Not margarine, or whipped yogurt, but honest to goodness Land-O-Lakes butter with sweet cream, (lightly salted of course). So do the conversion, and I need a stick and a third or so of butter. Pause for a moment, and start drooling thinking how good this has to taste with a stick of butter starting off :)

For the pumpkin part of the bread, they recommend using a can of pumpkin. I don't know what really goes into the canned pumpkin in the store, can't be much different than the spiced pumpkin we put up every year using the pumpkins we get from the orchard where we go apple picking. However, the home made stuff, roasted in the oven, and cooked down in the crock pot, spiced to taste and then canned, always tastes so much better than the market stuff. We always get raves from our pumpkin pie and pumpkin cheese cakes, and I always figure it the home made pumpkin that does it.

Those are the only real changes to the recipe, though I added nutmeg instead of cloves, and didn't add raisins or nuts, mainly because I didn't have any to hand. The results, in my not so humble opinion, are outstanding. The hard part now, is going to be not eating anymore of the bread before I deliver them to day care on Monday :)

Take care all,


Casey