Well, it's thoroughly October. For us Chicagoans, that means the sky is whipping around an icy drizzle that likes to unhood every hapless, grocery-seeking pedestrian as they traipse through the unnaturally pitch-dark early evening. It means my landlord had to come over yesterday to light--with fire!--the gas heater embedded in my wall (as someone raised on radiators this is an entirely strange and new concept to me). And it means that no matter where you go, you'll be bombarded with pumpkin-themed imagery and pumpkin-flavored treats. 'Tis the season of giant orange gourds. There is no escape.
So, I thought, why not embrace it? It's not like it isn't delicious. There are few pies better than pumpkin pies, few muffins better than those glued together with the hollowed-out innards of Halloween fruit. It makes the process of settling into an icy wasteland of a city that much more bearable. So I braved the slushy eve and picked up the remaining ingredients needed for my very favorite dessert bread: that of the pumpkin persuasion.
I still had a can of pumpkin pack that I'd inherited from my former roommates' unrealized baking ambitions, so I was mostly good to go. What follows is a slightly modified recipe from Epicurious. I prefer the can route because I'm lazy and prefer to avoid disemboweling entire gourds when possible, but if you're a more dedicated baker, feel free to go ahead and swap in real, fresh pumpkin. This recipe also makes tasty muffins if you're into more easily hand-held treats--just bake for 20 minutes instead of 60.
You'll need:
3 cups sugar (I like to make at least 1 of them brown)
1 cup vegetable oil (I use the lighter variety of olive oil because straight-up vegetable oil irks me out--how do you get oil from a vegetable? What kind of vegetable? Altogether too vague not to be suspicious.)
1 egg
1 large, overripe banana
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 16-oz can pumpkin
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon ground cloves (I only had whole and had to grind 'em myself--I'd recommend not doing it that way)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a huge bowl, cream sugar and oil together. Mash up that banana in a small bowl, then add to mixture. Add egg, vanilla, and pumpkin. In another big bowl, sift together remaining dry ingredients. Gradually stir dry stuff into wet stuff. Pour resulting goop into 2 buttered and floured loaf pans (I only have one so I'm baking in shifts). Throw them in the oven for about an hour, possibly an hour and 10 minutes, or until sharp object inserted into center comes out clean. Take out the pans and let 'em cool for 10 minutes, then loosen loaves with a knife and let them finish cooling on a rack or plate. Allow the bread to reintroduce warmth into your swiftly cooling and darkening existence. Repeat as necessary.