I feel like by calling this basic I am insulting it but what I mean is, this is a delicious no frills pumpkin bread that is easily adaptable should you wish to add any kind of browned butter, chocolate chip, cranberry frills. I’ve made this a few times and each time I felt like I was adding too many frills, at one point you wouldn’t have known there was pumpkin in it (largely due to too much treacle) so I stripped it back and there it was, a super simple but delicious loaf perfect for afternoon coffee.

This was what I had been thinking about just before I made this bread. Stop overcomplicating life/recipes. The reason my last few recipes had failed was because I had made them too complicated. I like a strong ginger flavour so I put 1.5 teaspoons in but you can adjust the spices to your taste. I’ll be sneaking a slice of this into work for my 3pm sugar craving.

Ingredients

200g unsalted butter
40g treacle
100g light brown sugar
150g pumpkin puree
3 large eggs
250g plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1-1.5 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C/350 F/Gas Mark 4. Grease and line a loaf tin and set aside.
2. Whisk the flour, bicarbonate of soda, and spices in a medium bowl.
3. Melt the butter over a medium heat. Pour into a large bowl and whisk in the pumpkin, treacle and sugar. Add the eggs, whisk until just combined and then fold in the dry ingredients until all the flour has gone.
4. Pour into your loaf tin and bake on the middle shelf for 45 minutes or until a cocktail stick comes out clean.
5. Leave to cool for at least 20 minutes before turning out.