Pumpkin Bread

Last weekend I baked the three kabocha squashes we got from our delivery from Red Goose Gardens.  I did a little research on them and discovered that they are a great substitute for pumpkin in most recipes, so I decided to bake them. 

Kabocha squashes.  I had three of them about the size of a baby's head.  Together, they made 6 cups of puree. 

To bake the squashes, I washed them, then just threw them in a 350 oven for about an hour.  I let them cool a little, then cut them in half, removed the seeds and stringy stuff and then scooped out the flesh & mashed it with a fork. 

I froze four cups in two cup portions for later baking adventures.  With the 2 cups I didn't freeze, I made pumpkin bread.  It's that time of year when the smell of baking pumpkin the the spices that go with it is just so delicious.  This recipe is totally stolen from simplyrecipes.com, which always seems to have the exact recipe I'm looking for.  I made it my own by altering the spices a little, adding brown sugar and substituting plain yogurt for some of the oil, but the basic recipe is theirs. 

Pumpkin Bread (Makes one loaf.)

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 t. of salt

1 c. sugar (I used half white sugar and half brown sugar)

1 t. baking soda

1 c. pumpkin purée (or squash)

1/2 cup olive oil (I used plain yogurt for half of the oil)

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 c. water

1/2 t. nutmeg

1/2 t. cinnamon

1/4 t. ginger

1/4 t. ground cloves

1/2 c. chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350.  Mix together the flour, salt, sugar, and baking soda. Mix the pumpkin, oil, eggs, 1/4 cup of water, and spices together, then combine with the dry ingredients, but do not mix too thoroughly. Stir in the nuts.  Pour into a well greased  9x5x3 inch loaf pan. Bake 50-60 minutes until a toothpick poked in the very center of the loaf comes out clean. Turn out of the pan and let cool on a rack.

Tastes and smells like fall!  I doubled the recipe and froze one of the loaves for later.  Iwent out of town for a few days and looked for the extra loaf in the freezer when I got home, only to find it gone.  Phil and the girls had eaten it for breakfast.  Guess I'll have to make more!