Pumpkin Sweet Bread…Or Is It Cake?

Everyone knows that bread and cake are two different things. You use bread to make a sandwich. You serve cake at a birthday party. You wouldn’t use one in place of the other, right?

Yes, there are some breads and cakes that do fall squarely into each category. But sometimes, you wind up with a magical creatio that falls somewhere in between. Enter Pumpkin Sweet Bread.

I really wanted to make a pumpkin bread, but I was tired of looking at all the existing recipes on the internet (and there were oh so many). I wanted something new – something I could call my own. So I hit the old pastry school text books for some basics to start with, and built my very own pumpkin sweet bread recipe from scratch.

The dough was wonderful. I could not stop eating it. It reminded me of a thick cake batter. It was then that it hit me: this was no ordinary sweet bread. This was some sort of bread/cake hybrid that could be sliced and used on a sandwich OR frosted and jabbed with some candles as a birthday tribute.

the bread of frankenstein.

I had successfully created something new. My work here is done. 🙂

Pumpkin Sweet Bread/Cake.

What you’ll need:

1 lb 4 oz Flour

10 oz Sugar

1.75 oz Baking Powder

.25 oz Salt

6 oz Eggs

14 oz Almond Milk

.5 oz Vanilla

8 oz Melted Butter

1 cup Pumpkin Puree

1 cup Pumpkin Chips

What you’ll do:

Preheat the oven to 375. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, almond milk, vanilla, melted butter, and pumpkin puree. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and mix until just combined. fold in the chips, but be careful not to over mix – the dough/batter should be lumpy. Grease two 9×5 loaf pans and divide evenly between the two. Bake for approximately 40 minutes. The outside should have a little bit of crust, the sides should begin to pull away from the pan, and a toothpick inserted should come out clean. Serve alone, with a giaze, as part of a sandwich, or frost it for a birthday. The options are endless!

a happy birthday sandwich?

A Birthday Cake to Fall For.

I made a birthday cake last week, but this was no ordinary birthday cake. I was tasked with creating a “Fall” birthday cake – made up of the flavors and colors associated with this time of year. The only requirement was not too much orange. Sounded like something I could do (and enjoy very much, what with my fall baking obsession and all). The cake itself was to be pumpkin spice (yay!), the icing was to be pumpkin buttercream (DOUBLE yay!), and the decorations were to be in fall colors. It was a half sheet cake, so it’s not the smallest cake, but it’s not the biggest either. So, here’s what I came up with.

i think that possibly maybe i’m falling for cake.

For the flowers, I started off with red, and then slowly mixed in yellow as I went along. It created a subtle and well-blended color shift.

color blend.

I also tried a new recipe for the “rose icing” as it’s sometimes called. I found it to have a better consistency than what I was previously using. Good thing I wrote it down.

the rose knows.

In the end, I was pleased with how the cake turned out both flavor-wise and decoration-wise. And who knows, you may find me teaching some decorating classes come next year….time will tell… 😉

 

Recipe: Soft and Chewy Pumpkin Cinnamon Chip Cookies.

I love pumpkin. I love the fact that everything has a seasonal “pumpkin” or “pumpkin spice” flavor. I want to buy it all and hoard it for the rest of year. But I fear that if I do, I will be poor and hungry, since I’d grow sick of eating nothing but pumpkin. So for now, I’ll just continue to love it in the fall.

Because it’s such a small window of time, I try and take full advantage, making as many pumpkin desserts as I possibly can. This will be number 2 so far this season. Since the last thing I made was a Pumpkin Almond Spice Cake, I wanted to do cookies for this next round. I thought I’d made pumpkin cookies before, but I found no record of such a thing in my binder, so I started from scratch and began a search for a recipe to use as a foundation. I found this one, and it sounded like a perfect platform from which to jump right in and create.

there’s something pumpkin going on.

I mixed up the recipe, pretty much as it was written, but I didn’t like the glaze idea, so I decided instead to add two cups of one of my absolute favorite baking accoutrements, Cinnamon Chips.

it’s beginning to look a lot like pumpkin.

I used my trusty mini ice cream scoop, which is perfectly cookie-sized, and scooped them out onto parchment paper-covered cookie sheets.

here’s the scoop.

I baked them at 350 for about 15 minutes, and they were perfect. Seriously. They were not burned, yet were cooked all the way through, and remained soft and chewy and delicious throughout their entire lifespan.

soft. chewy. cinnamon chip-y.

The recipe made a lot of them, too. I had baked 3 trays of 15 cookies each, and had to stop because someone was nagging me about using the oven. In his defense, it was dinner time. So I wrapped the rest of the dough and put it in the fridge and plan to bake it off this week!

 

get pumped for pumpkin.

It’s that time of year – the air gets a little brisker, the days get a little shorter, the desserts get a little better. Maybe I’m biased, but I don’t think it gets any better than the seasonal desserts of autumn. Throw in Halloween, and you’ve got your work cut out for you, especially when it comes to cupcakes!

So, with that being said, this post is dedicated to fall-themed cupcakes, both past and present. Maybe you’ll see something that tickles your autumn taste buds, and then proceed to email me and place an order for it. I’m here to help.

Let the games begin!

all pumpkin, all the time.

This is a cinnamon pumpkin cupcake with a buttercream flower on top, and sprinkled with cinnamon. Perfect companion for that spiced latte you’ve been waiting all year for.

sprinkles add instant autumn.

These are also pumpkin, but pumpkin spice, with a whipped cream frosting, and “autumn medley” sprinkles. Kid’s love ’em. And just so no adults feel left out…

the adult version.

Same pumpkin spice cupcake, but with more elegant grown-up icing.

Moving right along,..

 

spider - he is our hero.

These are not pumpkin, they’re chocolate, but the cups are orange and they’re Halloween themed. Plus they have an oreo on top. Who doesn’t love an oreo spider?

Keeping with the Halloween theme…

scary good.

Also not pumpkin, but Halloween themed, these buttercream ghosts are perched atop a vanilla mini cupcake, and with mini M&M eyes that scare you into eating them.

Now for something completely different… 

it's all about the leaves.

These were an actual request for “autumn themed” cupcakes. I was given free rein on decorating, the only requirement was that they were chocolate.

And finally, to bring it all full circle…

autumn in ball form.

Pumpkin cake balls topped with a dollop of pumpkin buttercream. Can you eat just one? I don’t think so. But why don’t you order some from me and try?

So that’s a just a sampling of what I can do to make your autumn a little sweeter. So what are you waiting for? Before you know it, fall is over and its Christmas. And what have you done?