Birthday Month!!

Wow.....C&C is almost a year old!! Since it's birthday month, I'll try to do more frequent but shorter posts this month. I said try....not promising. It's a crazy time of the year work-wise, so I'll try to cut down on the rambling. The recipes and photos will still be there. :)

So yeah...doesn't feel like it has been a year at all. It's fall again! And that means pumpkin love......yup, I really can't get enough of that stuff. So dear readers, presenting my favorite pumpkin chocolate chip bread. If you don't like chocolate (what??!!), just leave it out...the bread will still be amazing.

I got the original recipes from the sources mentioned below and then played around with the flour and sugar to make it healthier and less sugary. The recipe here lists my substitutions.

Happy reading and happy baking!

PS - Blogger is acting up, so the formatting is probably an eyesore. Sorry!!!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread

Inspired by http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2010/10/perfect-pumpkin-chocolate-chip-bread.html and http://kirbiecravings.com/2011/10/pumpkin-bread-2.html

1 ½ cups white (all purpose) flour
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour 

2/3 cup agave nectar

1 cup (not heaping) white sugar 

2-3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

½ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon ground ginger
1.5 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

1 can pumpkin puree
½ cup oil

½ cup unsweetened applesauce
4 large eggs

1/2 cup water

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (or combine semi-sweet and dark chocolate chips)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease the loaf pans.

In a large bowl, mix flours, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves and salt together. In another bowl, whisk together canned pumpkin, applesauce, oil, eggs, agave nectar and water until well combined. Stir into dry ingredients and mix just until the dry ingredients are moistened and no dry streaks remain. Stir in chocolate chips. Pour batter in prepared pans. 

Bake for about 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove the bread from the oven and let sit for 10-15 minutes.  Then take them out of the baking pans and let them cool on a wire rack.

Notes:

1. You can use regular whole wheat flour instead of the ww pastry flour. Just use more white flour and less ww flour in that case.....don't change the total quantity of flour.

2. Use about 2.5 cups of granulated sugar instead of the agave-sugars mix.

3. If you don't have applesauce, use 1 cup of oil instead.