Recipe: Pumpkin Bread

It is mid-October and pumpkin food is everywhere you turn. A friend made the comment that she was making pumpkin bread and from the moment I heard her say that I have been craving pumpkin bread. I've never made it so I searched around on my cell one day on my lunch break (well I don't get breaks so I searched while eating and teaching, bad confession!) and decided I'd make time to bake today. I am a busy lady, so busy that I felt the need to multi-task while attempting to bake and totally screwed up the recipe. It is baking now, smells so amazingly yummy, but it certainly is not what I set off making. I hope it tastes good otherwise I wasted all the ingredients and time on nothing! Lesson learned: take time to relax! If you can't even follow a recipe for bread you are doing too much and need to carve time for the simple things in life!

*Update: Dear Lord that bread was simply amazing!! I will make it the wrong way every single time I bake it! It is so moist and has a very subtle pumpkin flavor. Alex begged for pumpkin bread each morning for breakfast. A slice of this tasty bread with a cup of greek yogurt and a banana has been his breakfast of choice all week! We cleared the entire loaf and I need to make more tonight if I can muster up the energy!

Ingredients

1 package (8 ounce) cream cheese, at room temperature

1 tablespoon finely grated orange peel (I omitted this)

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 cup pumpkin puree, canned or homemade

1/2 cup vegetable oil

3 eggs

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

Since you are making this my "messed up way" just mix it all together!! Seriously, I mixed the cream cheese, one egg, 1/2 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of flour together until it was really creamy and set it aside. Then I sifted together the rest of the ingredients into a bowl. If you want to follow the “Melissa Way” just dump the pumpkin mixture into the cream cheese mixture and make sure you blend it together well. Then place it all inside a lightly greased loaf pan and bake on 350 degree for a very long time...this is where I wondered what the hell I did as the bread wasn't baked in the 45 minutes I had written down. I bet this bread cooked for a good 90 minutes! Keep checking on it to make sure it isn’t burning. This pumpkin bread is seriously addicting! Enjoy!

I'm always looking to make recipes healthier. I plan on making this bread this week, but I will sub local honey for the sugar, all natural applesauce for the vegetable oil and I'll do a "half and half" mixture of whole wheat flour and all-purpose flour. If I make the bread I'll update with results.