Pumpkin chocolate chip bread
Recipe adapted from an old Andronico's Market weekly circular:
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup canola oil (orig., 1 cup)
- 2 cups brown sugar (orig., 2-2/3 cups of granulated sugar; changed this to accommodated a bit of molasses)
- 4 large eggs
- 1-3/4 cups (or 1 15-oz can) pumpkin puree (orig. read 2 cups, but this was a mistaken conversion; still, a little extra pumpkin/squash puree is A-OK)
- 1-1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (can substitute fresh or frozen cranberries -- I sometimes increase to 2 cups' worth)
- 3-1/3 cups sifted unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 cup chopped toasted pecans (toasted walnuts are tasty here too)
- 1-1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon nutmeg
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 cup unsulphured (NOT blackstrap!) molasses
- 1/2 cup milk (nonfat/reduced fat/full fat -- anything goes, as far as I'm concerned)
Directions
1. Position rack in center of oven. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit. Lightly butter two 9x5 loaf pans.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the oil and the sugar. Beat in the eggs, pumpkin, milk, and molasses. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla, stirring just to blend, then mix in the pecans and chocolate chips.
3. Spoon the batter into the greased loaf pans. Put the pans onto a baking sheet to help prevent the bread bottoms from browning too much. Bake the bread for about 1 hour, or until a cake tester inserted in the center of a loaf comes out clean. Remove the bread from the oven, let it rest about 10 minutes on a cooling rack while still in the pan. Then flip the bread out of the pan and onto the rack to cool completely.
Sweet Potato Variation
- I roughly halved the recipe and replaced pumpkin puree with sweet potato puree. About 1 lb of sweet potatoes, baked until tender, will yield 1 cup of puree.
- Instead of the spices listed, I used 1 heaping Tbsp of pumpkin pie spice.
- Leftover slices are tasty toasted.
