Spiced Pumpkin Bread (Muffins)

I love pumpkin flavored food. Starbucks has a seasonal latte that is pumpkin spice and I order it skinny and tall with a piece of pumpkin bread. It's a little bit of heaven inside my car as I drive. I shared my bread with Devon and he calls it pumpkin cake so I decided to make some. I got this recipe from www.epicurious.com (where I get most of my recipes, by the way). I made two batches of muffins in two days and both times they turned out perfectly so it's a good recipe for muffins. I will say that I thought the loaf was over done and I would have to adjust the recommended cooking time if I really wanted to have bread, but I prefer the muffins anyway.


I used a cool leaf muffin tin that my Mom gave me from Williams Sonoma ... fancy. I got 36 muffins from one batch.


My sister, Jane, doesn't like pumpkin bread, but she liked these. They aren't too pumpkiny and they are a great spice cake for "fall" here in Tucson where we can still wear tank tops and flip flops.

Ingredients:

3 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1 16-ounce can solid pack pumpkin
3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts (optional)


Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour two 9x5x3-inch loaf pans. Beat sugar and oil in large bowl to blend. Mix in eggs and pumpkin. Sift flour, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, salt and baking powder into another large bowl. Stir into pumpkin mixture in 2 additions. Mix in walnuts, if desired.

Divide batter equally between prepared pans. Bake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour 10 minutes. Transfer to racks and cool 10 minutes. Using sharp knife, cut around edge of loaves. Turn loaves out onto racks and cool completely.

*For muffins, I bake at 375 for 15 minutes.

Enjoy!