Molly Makes Pumpkin Bread with Maple Butter

I just wanna clear one thing up.

It's called pumpkin bread, but I realized in developing it,

that this is a cake, and people are just fooling themselves

thinking that they're eating bread,

but really they're just eating cake,

so it's now pumpkin cake.

[upbeat music]

Today I'm going to show you how to make

pumpkin bread with salted maple butter,

a.k.a the great pumpkin bread recipe of 2018.

This is a quick-bread.

It's super simple, you need two bowls,

one loaf pan, some pantry ingredients,

a lot of olive oil, and that's basically it.

This is the better version of that sad Starbucks

pumpkin bread that's at the counter of every coffee shop,

so I made a few changes to a classic pumpkin bread,

namely removing the ground ginger from the mixture,

because I'm just not a fan,

and substituting that with fresh ginger.

So it's sort of like a spice cake, ginger cake,

pumpkin loaf mash up.

So to get started, I'm gonna whisk together

all my dry ingredients.

I have two and a half cups of AP flour,

some cinnamon, ground cinnamon, baking powder and soda,

a slight hint of ground clove, gonna do a half a teaspoon

of this grated nutmeg, freshly grated always better

than the pre-ground stuff.

Mmm, smells good.

And then of course, salt,

and I think there is two teaspoons of salt in this recipe,

which is a decent amount, but it's not a salty cake,

so just bear with me.

I know everyone thinks I'm like the salty girl,

actually I think they think everyone here is the salty girl,

but this cake isn't salty, it's just not,

it's just properly proper.

Okay so I'm gonna prepare this loaf pan.

Spraying it with pam or non-stick cooking spray,

and then taking a piece of parchment that's cut

the width of the pan, and just pressing it down in there.

The spray helps to allow it to adhere to the sides,

and we do this because at the end when the cake has cooled,

we pull up on these handles,

and the cake will lift right out of the loaf pan.

For our second bowl,

this is gonna be our wet ingredients bowl.

So I have one can here of Libby's 100% pure pumpkin,

and I'm gonna whisk in two whole eggs, room temp,

always best to bake with room temp eggs

unless otherwise specified.

Breaking those up a bit, gonna whisk these together,

and add one and a half cups of sugar.

It's a good amount of sugar.

And then once this is all combined,

I'll grate in some fresh ginger.

So as I said before, if you have ground ginger

at your house, it's probably been there for like five years,

and it's stale, and so why not use fresh ginger instead?

I think it's four teaspoons,

or a tablespoon plus a teaspoon,

so you need a good three inch piece of ginger.

Okay, one tablespoon fresh ginger, going in,

plus one teaspoon.

Okay, I'm streaming in one cup of extra virgin olive oil.

This should be a middle of the road olive oil.

You don't need to use your fancy $30 bottle of finishing oil

but you also don't wanna use something

that doesn't taste particularly good,

'cause there's a lot of it in there.

So I'm gonna fold in the dry ingredients

in to the pumpkin mixture, little by little,

just doing it in two waves.

So you don't wanna overwork this batter

once the flour is in it, because you don't wanna

overwork the gluten, it can get tough,

so just until no dry spots remain.

Smells like autumn.

Pumpkin cakes that aren't doing it right,

they're overloading it on the dried spices,

like I feel like oftentimes there's like

three teaspoons, a tablespoon, of ground nutmeg.

There'll be so much cinnamon,

they're using a neutral oil that's not bringing much flavor

in particular to it, instead of olive oil.

They probably don't have enough salt in them.

Alright, no lumps remain, we have a nice thick batter,

and that's gonna go right in to the prepared pan.

[Man] Road boon!

[laughs] Road boon!

Alright, this is a nine by five loaf pan.

You wanna make sure you use a nine by five

and not something smaller, 'cause it's a lot of batter,

and it's gonna rise significantly,

and you don't want it to overflow.

So if you're not sure, measure your loaf pan,

and if you have a smaller one,

I'd hold back a little bit of the batter

so it doesn't spill over.

Okay, so all of the batter is in the pan,

and I'm just smoothing out the top so that it bakes evenly,

and then, I'm gonna put a half a cup of raw pumpkin seeds

all over the top, spreading them out evenly,

and then pressing them just gently

so that they adhere to the batter,

and then sprinkle it with one tablespoon of sugar,

which will get caramelized, and sparkly, and beautiful.

Alright, in to a 325 degree oven,

for somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours.

Here we go.

Now we wait.

So to serve with this pumpkin bread,

we're gonna make salted maple butter.

It's the simplest, easiest, it's butter, unsalted,

with maple syrup whipped in to it, with flaky salt.

So I have one and a half sticks of butter,

so you could also do this with just an electric hand mixer,

or by hand if you're a beast.

Okay, so we're gonna beat this for about four minutes,

until it gets really light and fluffy,

and there's a lot of air incorporated in to it,

and it will be paler in color at that point.

What makes this a pumpkin bread, and not a pumpkin cake,

is that it's served with butter and not frosting.

Otherwise thy're the same thing.

Kay, scraping down, back up.

Okay, this is what we're talking about.

I'm gonna scrape down one more time,

but this is starting to look like a pale cream colored,

and I can tell that it has a lot of air whipped in to it,

so pretty close,

and now I'm gonna drizzle in one quarter cup of maple syrup

as we beat,

and season it with three quarters of a teaspoon

of flaky salt.

It's looking good.

I'm gonna transfer this to a little ramekin.

Alright, woosh.

Salted maple done, gonna add a little more

flaky salt to the top.

It's been an hour and a half,

and we're gonna check on the pumpkin bread.

I've been keeping an eye on it,

but it looks beautiful, it has risen,

the pumpkin seeds are golden brown,

and we're just gonna check with a cake tester

and make sure that it's not wet inside.

So you wanna insert the cake tester

in to the thickest part of the loaf,

and pull it out, and make sure that it comes out

completely clean, like so.

So this has been cooling for about 10 minutes,

and I'm just gonna use an offset spatula

to help release it from the pan,

and let it cool further that way,

and then we can unpeel, and place it here to fully cool.

Alright, so the loaf has cooled,

and we're gonna just slice it up,

perfectly cooked, looks beautiful.

I'll take the butt end, even though

it's not my favorite part.

I need some tasters on camera then,

I can't just keep eating this.

I had this when you were testing it.

Yeah I--

Like way back.

Yeah, I think one of the first iterations.

Okay, you wanna try it?

What's up with the butter though?

Oh, it's salted maple butter.

Oh-ho, salted maple butter!

Of course. Of course!

It's just whipped unsalted butter,

with maple syrup, and flaky salt.

I mean, this is like what I want

for breakfast every morning, right?

Yeah, and lunch and dinner. Like in a,

in a, in a consequence free world.

You could have this.

I mean I could in this world too, but.

Okay, like I said, it's a bread and a cake,

so you could bake it in a loaf pan,

but you could also bake this in to small cake pans,

and frost them, and make a tiered layer cake,

as I did last weekend for a birthday,

for my husband's birthday.

So it's a quick-bread, easy cake, basic as [bleep],

delicious as [bleep], it's pumpkin bread,

it's the great pumpkin bread of 2018.

Okay, well why don't you come back

when I have something to.

Can I taste all of your mis en place?

Do you wanna, sure.

Do you wanna taste my ground clove?

I've actually never tasted

raw flour. Ooh, that was very dry.

This.

That has a bad flavor.

Wait, wait, wait.

Ew, you did not just eat that!

That's baking powder.

Ay, oh, ugh.

All of it, stop, it's gonna be delicious.

Oh that was, is that mace?

Allspice?

Nutmeg. Nutmeg.

Oh no, that was clove.

Oh clove.

Well you obviously don't know your warm winter spices.

Also my taste buds are assaulted by all of this.

Why are you making me do this?

Okay, I have to make a film here.

It's really, clove is really, it does have a bite.

And it's weird to eat raw flour,

I've never done that before.

Okay.