The Best Pumpkin Spice Bread Recipe
Finding pleasure in food is an unusually good weapon against diet culture and one of the ten principles of intuitive eating. For anyone caught in a restriction-binge cycle, rediscovering pleasure in eating without guilt or shame is an important part of the healing process.
What I love about this pumpkin spice bread recipe is the pleasure I feel eating it, but also the pleasure of making it, smelling it baking, and sharing it with others. I’ve made this recipe every fall for the past several years.
Last week I pulled out the recipe again in response to someone’s question, What are you doing to take care of yourself today? This was my satisfying answer, and a delicious part of my family’s dinner!
Pumpkin Spice Bread
(a.k.a. The Last Pumpkin Bread Recipe You’ll Ever Need)*
This recipe makes one loaf or 12 muffins and can be doubled.
INGREDIENTS
1 ½ c. brown sugar
½ c. (1 stick) softened unsalted butter
2 large eggs
1 c. pumpkin puree
1 ½ c. all purpose flour**
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1tsp. ground ginger
½ tsp. nutmeg
½ tsp. allspice
½ tsp salt
⅓ c. buttermilk
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour a loaf pan or line a muffin tin with paper liners.
Cream together brown sugar and butter. Add eggs and pumpkin puree and combine well. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice and salt.
Stir the dry ingredients into the wet pumpkin mixture in 3 additions, alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.
Pour in a loaf pan or muffin tin. Bake loaf pan for approximately 50 minutes and 25 minutes for muffins. Check doneness with a toothpick.
*This recipe was adapted from The Delicious Life website.
** I often substitute ½ whole grain flour, such as Capay Mills’ Red Bug Nouveau Blend or King Arthur Stone Ground White Whole Wheat flour, for ½ c. all purpose flour. The whole grain adds flavor, fiber, and nutrients, and this small amount creates more structure but not a heavy brick loaf!
If you have leftover buttermilk and want to make southern cornbread, this is my all-time favorite cornbread recipe. In case you forgot, I’m from North Carolina and eating cornbread is in my DNA.
Jenny’s Cornbread
Preheat oven to 450°. Butter an 8”x8” pan or 9” cast iron skillet.
INGREDIENTS
1 c. plain yellow cornmeal
½ c. all purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. baking soda
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 c. buttermilk
½ c. milk
1 egg
1 stick of unsalted butter, melted
DIRECTIONS
Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl with a whisk. Add the wet ingredients and stir until combined. Pour batter into a pan or skillet and bake for 20 minutes. Edges should be golden and crispy.
How are you taking care of yourself today?
Dieting and diet culture wouldn’t make sense if we simply accepted that people come in all different sizes.
Virgie Tovar
