Pumpkin Bread

Happy November! I hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween! I kind of forgot about Halloween yesterday.. we celebrated all weekend but when it got to the actual day I just let it slide on by. Even though we live in a house we don't get any trick-or-treaters on campus which is kind of sad because I like to see all of the costumes. Luckily when we were on the capitol square on Friday for my birthday lunch we saw all the kids trick-or-treating to the local businesses. They were so cute. The best costume we saw was a little duck, the boy must have been like 3 or 4 years old. Saturday night when I was waiting in the massive line to get into a bar I saw the best costume. It was 4 people dressed as Tetris pieces. They were moving along side the windows and switching around to try to fit together. It was awesome. Now that Halloween is over we are moving towards my favorite holiday... Thanksgiving! And you know what that means? Lots and lots of pumpkin recipes to come. This pumpkin bread is definitely one of my favorites. The bread has a crunchy exterior and a pillowy middle. Seriously so delicious. It made my house smell like Thanksgiving. The combination of the cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger is absolutely **insert word for yummy in the senses.** Even better is that this recipe makes 2 loaves... so when you bring one entire loaf to your friends they're going to think you're being extremely generous. Little do they know that you brought them the uglier of the two loaves and have an entire one to yourself. Yeah, I'm a good friend.

Ingredients:
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
3 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 (15 oz) pumpkin puree

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together butter and sugar. Add in eggs and vanilla extract and mix until combined. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger and whisk together. Pour the dry ingredients into the sugar mixture and stir together with a spoon until dry ingredients are just incorporated. Then stir in the pumpkin puree. Pour batter into two greased 9x5 inch loaf pans. Bake at 350F for 1 hour or until baked all the way through.

Source: Recipe from Shirley Sober (All Recipes)