When I come home for the holidays, I wreck havoc on my poor
dad’s diet. A couple pounds of butter, a bag or two of sugar, two dozen eggs…
and then all of the sudden there are six dozen cookies in the kitchen and I’m
whisked back to school leaving all of them for him. So when I got home this
week full of pent-up baking energy, Mom not-so-subtly suggested I maybe try something a little more
healthy. So here I go, vegan pumpkin bread.
Scrounge the following from the dusty empty-nest shelves of
your childhood home:
1 2/3 cup flour
1/3 cup oatmeal
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 ½ tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
andddd about another tsp of a
nutmeg-allspice-cloves-cardamom mixture
1 tsp vanilla
½ cup brown sugar
1/3 cup water (or chai tea, because it’s yummy)
1 cup pumpkin puree
¾ cup applesauce (about 2 medium apples**)
¼ cup canola oil
**Don’t have applesauce? Peel and dice two medium apples,
and add enough water to cover them. Boil for about 15-20 minutes, drain, and
mash with a fork or potato masher. Boom, applesauce.
Mix applesauce, canola oil, pumpkin, vanilla, chai, sugar,
and spices. My mom and I tried to estimate what we did with spices, but really
just add stuff until it tastes right. She insists there’s a point where you do
too much, but I haven’t found it yet.
In another bowl, mix the flour, oatmeal, baking soda, baking
powder, and salt. Add this gradually to the wet mixture, little bits at a time.
Pour the batter into a greased and floured 9x5 loaf pan, and
bake at 375 for about 50 minutes. Even if a toothpick comes out clean, the
bread is ridiculously m**st (edited for you, Kilbride- ARE YOU STILL ALIVE?)
