Last night I was flipping through an old quick breads book looking for a recipe with pumpkin in it and found this – Pumpkin Gingerbread. My good food antenna went up. I love gingerbread and adding pumpkin and a crumb topping to it? Fantabulous! So I made it, and while it was baking a wonderful aroma of gingerbread, pumpkin, and redolent spices wafted through the house. Who needs scented candles? This morning I had a piece for breakfast with a cup of tea. All I can say is that pumpkin and gingerbread are a marriage made in Thanksgiving heaven. See for yourself:
RECIPE
- 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon nutmeg
- 3/4 cup ( 1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
- 2 cups pumpkin puree (or canned)
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup molasses
- 1/3 cup buttermilk (or 1/3 tablespoon vinegar in 1/3 cup milk)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 X 9 inch pan and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl add sugar, flours, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger.
Add butter and cut it into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender or fork until the butter is pea sized.
Measure out 3/4 cup and set aside to use as the crumb topping later.
In a separate mixing bowl blend together the pumpkin (if you don’t have pumpkin puree, you can used canned), buttermilk ( if you don’t have buttermilk, you can use regular milk with 1/3 tablespoon vinegar added and let stand for 10 minutes), molasses, eggs and baking soda.
Mix with a fork or whisk until well blended.
Kitty was making a pass through the kitchen. She stopped to approve of the baking process and then kept on going. She was on evening patrol and didn’t have time to hang around.
Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Add the wet mixture to the dry and blend well with a mixing spoon.
Spread evenly into greased pan and sprinkle crumb topping evenly over the top.
Bake 40 – 45 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.Pumpkin gingerbread
