Pumpkin Gingerbread Loaf

As fall gets closer I like to use up my pumpkin puree with recipes like this pumpkin gingerbread loaf. Full of warm spices, molasses, and pumpkin. This quick bread is soft and moist and great for breakfast, brunches, dessert or just a nice afternoon snack.

Ingredients For Pumpkin Gingerbread Loaf

Pumpkin Puree

You can use canned pumpkin or fresh pumpkin puree for this pumpkin gingerbread recipe. I like to cook a pumpkin or two at the beginning of the fall season and freeze my pumpkin puree for all my pumpkin recipes throughout the holiday season. If you have a whole pumpkin but don’t know how to cook it check out “how to make pumpkin puree.”

If you don’t have pumpkin you can substitute pumpkin puree for sweet potatoes, butternut squash, acorn squash, or bananas and make it a banana bread.

Plain or Vanilla Yogurt

I use Plain Greek Yogurt most of the time, I use yogurt in replacement for vegetable oil or butter in most of my muffins and bread. It has more vitamins and protein then oils and butter and less fat.

Eggs

Eggs are the binding agent in this recipe. You can substitute eggs for 2 tablespoons chia or ground flax seed and with 6 tablespoons water (1 tablespoon chia or flax with 3 tablespoons water per egg)

Blackstrap Molasses

Full of flavor, nutrients and keeps my breads moist and delicious! Oh how I love molasses! It is so rich in so many vitamins and minerals and such a fun ingredient to add to my recipes. Molasses contains, iron, calcium, magnesium, sodium, copper and more. healthy for your heart and nervous system. Read more on the Benefits of Molasses here!

If you don’t have molasses you can substitute by using dark brown sugar or turbinado sugar. Brown sugar contains molasses. Read more about how to make your own brown sugar with molasses here.

Flour

I use a combination of organic whole wheat flour and organic all purpose flour. Whole wheat is full of a wider range of vitamins and minerals such as, manganese, calcium and selenium, then all purpose or even enriched flours. It also has more flavor but is also a bit more dense. So I do half and half Whole Wheat and All Purpose.

Sugar

You can substitute sugar with honey or pure maple syrup. Both of those would also add a lovely flavor to this recipe but I typically bake with sugar and save my honey and syrup for smoothies, pancakes, teas, oatmeal and such.

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is the chosen spice in order to add another layer of flavor to this recipe. Nutmeg, cloves or allspice would also be great additions but this recipe already seem complex with so many textures that I left those out for now.

Ginger

This wouldn’t be a gingerbread without a big of ginger. I like to use fresh ginger most of the type but I’ve written this recipe for ground ginger. 1 teaspoon ground ginger to add just enough spice to our pumpkin bread recipe. If you want to use fresh ginger I suggest cutting it in have. Fresh ginger is much stronger, use 1/2 teaspoon of fresh ginger.

Salt

Salt is going to help bring out all the flavors. My favorite salt is Redmond’s Real salt, and Here you can learn more about the benefits and risks of different types of salts.

Baking Soda and Baking Powder

Both of these are a rising agent. The original recipe just had baking soda but as I adapted and added all these heavy grains I found the baking powder was also needed.

Vanilla

I like to use vanilla powder rather than extract. You can find the vanilla powder on amazon. This powder is a 1:1 ratio for vanilla extract so you don’t have to do any extra math when substituting. I like the flavor a lot and its been a great addition to my pantry.

How To Make Pumpkin Gingerbread

Mix Wet Ingredients

(Preheat oven to 300)
In a medium bowl mix together pumpkin, yogurt, eggs, and molasses.

Add Dry Ingredients

Next, mix your sugar, flour, spices and baking soda. Add your flour mixture to your pumpkin mixture and mix together with a whisk, spoon or spatula.

Prepare Your Loaf Pan

Butter or oil, your loaf pan and sprinkle a mixture of cinnamon and sugar on in the pan to give the crust a sweet crunchy texture. Pour the gingerbread batter into the prepared pan.

Bake

Bake at 300 degree for 60 minutes or until the middle of the loaf is cook through. Due to the molasses the bread will be dark and a little hard to tell when its done. Insert a toothpick to see if your loaf is done. If it comes out clean it is done, if it comes out with batter or crumbs stuck to it, it needs to bake longer. 

Once done let cool in the pan for about 5 minutes before taking it out. When you take it out let it finish cooling on a cooling rack till its at room temperature. At this point you can add a little powdered sugar on the top or even make a maple syrup glaze for some added sweetness. 

If baking in mini loaves reduce you time to 30-40 minutes depending on the size of your loaf pans. 

If baking in muffin tin be sure to line them with muffin papers or grease the inside really well. Bake for 18-22 minutes.