Simple Baked Goods

Pumpkin Bread

February 20 2019

So, pumpkin is a big deal in our house.

Autumn, Thanksgiving, Halloween all are important around here

My husband LOVES pumpkin and has passed it on to our boys.

I found a pumpkin cake recipe years ago for my husband’s birthday and it was an enormous hit! So much so that quite a few members of our family look forward to his birthday knowing the cake will make a quick appearance.

Pie, cake, cookies – if it has pumpkin it is sure to be a quick favourite. We buy the 4 or more boxes of the mix from Costco for a quick pumpkin bread or muffin fix.

I was a little nervous going into this one, will Martha be able to live up to the Longley Pumpkin standard?

But before I get into how this bake went, we need to talk about Martha and her pans.

There are several quick bread and pound cake recipes in this book. I have already made the Marble Pound Cake – which was amazing.

But there are several sizes of loaf pans, did you know this? I have ONE of the most common size: a 9×5. But some recipes are for 2 8 ½ x 4 ½ inch pans. What is the difference? How much could it matter?

Well Martha doesn’t explain, but a quick google search and a little common sense brings us to volume.

9×5 = 8 cups

8 ½ x 4 ½ = 6 cups

This recipe calls for 2 8 ½ x 4 ½ pans, or mini loaf pans – which I also don’t have.

So, I quickly improvised with muffins tins. 2/3 of the batter went in my 9×5 loaf (8 cup volume) and the remaining in 12 muffin cups. Also, this recipe can easily be cut in half to accommodate one loaf pan.

Here is where I say, “Sorry Martha, not everyone has multiple pans in nearly identical sizes.”

Anyhow, not a difficult bake, and I tried some of one of the muffins and it was ok. The texture was good, but the flavour was average. Nothing to write home about.

Husband and kids loved it. This is why there are no photos of it cut open, because it didn’t last long.