Pumpkin Bread Muffins

I have been back in the kitchen for about a week now, and it's fantastic to have easy access to ingredients and good equipment, so when a brilliant idea occurs to me for lunch (or more likely dessert) I can whip it up with no carefully planned trips to the supermarket or the one store that sells brown sugar that is actually brown sugar and not sugar in the raw, or scratch ideas as too expensive or impossible due to nonexistence of ingredients in Chile. Although I did spend about a week carefully planning out a route in order to buy all the necessary ingredients for cinnamon rolls for my host family and actually succeeded in finding everything in one (very long) trip, it's much more fun to open the cupboard and find everything waiting to be combined in a delicious concoction.

Even so, I learned some pretty awesome recipes in Chile, to which I will dedicate my next post. This post is to get back in the swing of things in the kitchen, and I noticed on the way into the house that we had one can of pumpkin puree sitting lonely and forgotten on top of the freezer in the garage. How American - canned food and a full freezer. Canned food is not big in Chile, especially when you can buy entire huge pumpkin-squash-gourd things (I hesitate to call them pumpkins because although they taste pumpkin-y and are orange or yellow inside, they are greyish green on the outside and are much harder than pumpkins) for a dollar. Easy access to fresh, cheap fruit and veggies makes freezing pretty uncommon too, and the culture just isn't there. Meals are meant to be savored, shared and eaten the day they are made, so no frozen, ready-made dinners for one.

I digress. I electric-can-opener-ed open our last big can of pumpkin puree to make pumpkin cinnamon rolls, so my mind was in pumpkin mode to use up the rest of the can before it started growing little white fuzzies on the rim.

I haven't posted about the epic halloween dinner party my friends and I hosted way back in October, primarily because the recipes I wanted to post were ones my friend brought over, and she was terribly unresponsive to my requests for recipes. I found this odd because she is the most prompt person I know, but I thought little of it as I had other things to occupy my mind and my blog.

It turns out, it was all part of a plan. For Christmas, my friend gifted me my very own recipe binder filled with bread recipes and space for thousands more pages, carefully organized (I can dream, right?), of all the best recipes compiled over a lifetime. It's my own version of my mom's amazing recipe book started in college that has pages upon pages typed on a typewriter, handwritten, torn from magazines, and edited and adjusted to no end in which you can find a recipe for just about anything.
I realize Christmas was months ago, but bear in mind that two weeks after that I was back in South America gallivanting around for three months with no thought for unfinished business in the kitchen. It was absolutely worth the wait for the recipes on my end, and now that I have them and I'm home and I'm on a pumpkin kick, I can share one with you.

Evidently it is a sin of gigantic proportions that I never in my life tasted pumpkin bread before last Halloween. I was not aware this was a staple food, but my friend assures me that it is. That being said, I made pumpkin bread for the epic Halloween party. It took surprisingly long to cook and was a little light on spices and a little too dense, but still tasty. I realize that pumpkin is an autumn thing, and I know it's supposed to be spring, but what with all the traveling I haven't had my seasons straight for years. Colorado can't decide on seasons anyway - it hardly looks like spring when it dumps six inches of snow overnight and the wind is so cold you can't feel your nose after fifteen seconds outside.

Since I had plenty of pumpkin left over from the cinnamon rolls, I decided to try the pumpkin bread recipe again, but avoid the hour of cooking time. This time I made muffins. I added more spices, actually whisked where I was supposed to, and cut the cooking time to twenty minutes. They are fluffy and moist with a delicate but noticeable balance of autumn spices, studded with walnuts and with little jewels of dried cranberries peeking out of the top. In short, they are absolutely delicious. I may have eaten three before they even cooled to room temperature. If there are any left, they will be awesome for breakfast, too.

Pumpkin Bread (Muffins)

Adapted from Kara's recipe repertoire

If you want pumpkin bread with more than just notes of autumn spices, feel free to increase the quantities of spices and add any that you would add to pumpkin pie. I was thinking cloves would be a good addition for next time. Also, imagine if I made a cream cheese frosting to top the muffins, or put a dollop of cream cheese filling inside each one before baking!

Makes one 9x5 loaf or 18 muffins

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ginger

1 3/4 cup (15 oz) pumpkin

1 cup sugar

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup coarsely chopped pecans or walnuts, optional

1 cup dried cranberries (cherries would probably work too, as would chocolate chips), optional

Preheat oven to 350ºF

In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg and ginger. In your mixer, whisk pumpkin, sugar, melted butter, eggs, and vanilla until fluffy. Gently fold flour mixture into the pumpkin mixture with a spatula until just combined. Fold in nuts and cranberries. The batter should be thick. 

Scrape batter into a greased 9x5 loaf pan and smooth the top, or spoon into prepared muffin tins. If you're making muffins, leave a little space (maybe an inch) for the muffins to rise. Bake until golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with just a few crumbs attached (not gooey!!)

Bake 20 minutes for muffins or 45-55 minutes for a loaf.

Let the loaf cool in the pan for ten minutes before unmolding onto a wire rack to cool for an hour.

If you made muffins, pull them hot out of the oven and break one open to watch all the steam escape around those beautiful hot cranberries, and enjoy as soon as you dare.