Christmas Countdown- The Great Pumpkin Loaf

It’s Christmas Eve!!!! Claire came over to my place today to finish up the Christmas baking. We had a few ideas of what we wanted to bake but due to my poor planning we were limited by the number of eggs I had on hand. We settled on this pumpkin loaf, as both of us have a soft spot for pumpkin. I really like this recipe because it calls for cream cheese in the batter. That makes for an extra tasty treat!

The Great Pumpkin Loaf (adapted from Jean Pare’s Muffins and More)

4 oz cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter
1 1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 1/4 all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice or cloves (I didn’t have cloves!)

Preheat oven to 350. Cream the cheese, butter and sugar in a mixing bowl (I used my stand mixer.) Beat in eggs one at a time until blended. Beat in pumpkin.
In another bowl, combine remaining ingredients. Stir until mixed. Pour into cheese/butter/sugar mixture and stir until just blended. Pour into greased 9×5 greased loaf pan. Bake for 60-70 minutes until tester comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes in pan (I skipped this!) Place on rack to cool.

Merry Merry!

 

Pumpkin and Maple Cream Cheese Bundt

Happy National Bundt Day! Mary, the Food Librarian, once again counted down to today by posting 30 bundts in 30 days. I love Mary’s blog, she always has tasty treats and beautiful photos. And of course, as mentioned before, I am partial to her blog as we are both librarians. I decided to join in the fun by making a pumpkin bundt with a maple cream cheese filling. I used mini bundt pans and I confess, I filled them too full. I guess I haven’t quite mastered them yet. Oh well, just another excuse to keep making bundts!

Pumpkin Bundt Cake (adapted from King Arthur Flour)

1/3 cup oil (I used canola but the original recipe indicated vegetable)

2 large eggs

1 cup sugar

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 1/4 cups flour

Maple Cream Cheese Filling
6 oz cream cheese, softened
2 tbs sugar
2 tbs brown sugar
3 tbs maple syrup
1 tbs flour
1 egg white

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 and grease your pans.

2. Mix together oil, eggs, sugar, pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder. (I used my stand mixer.)

3. Add flour and mix until just blended.  Set aside the batter.

4. Mix together all the cream cheese filling ingredients until smooth.

5. To assemble the cake, pour pumpkin batter into pans until 1/3 full. Then add a reasonable amount of the cream cheese mixture (sorry I eyeballed it). Then add more batter on top.

6. Bake for until tester comes out clean. This entirely depends on your pan size. Start by putting your timer on for 20 minutes and then keep checking.

BTW I had extra filling so I made pumpkin muffins to use it up!

Caroline

Pumpkin Caramel Cheesecake Loaf

My coworker Jen’s birthday was in the summer while I was off on vacation. Jen, being the awesome coworker that she is, made me a super delicious banana cake for my birthday last March. It was seriously amazing. So I was feeling really bad in October when I still hadn’t baked her up a late birthday treat. Jen was very gracious about the whole thing, given that September was beyond crazy in library land, and she was pleased enough to celebrate in October. We hemmed and hawed but when I saw this recipe by Peabody of Culinary Concoctions, we decided this was the one.

We were too busy eating the cake to focus on taking pictures, hence the slightly lame photo. But the cake was delicious, what’s not to like when pumpkin, cream cheese and caramel are involved? I think this would be great for afternoon tea over the Christmas holidays. I’m just sayin’ you might want to try it.