Be brave and eat pumpkin bread

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What I choose to bake is often a subconscious expression of how I am feeling. When I feel bold I come out swinging with elaborate, multi-stepped recipes. When I feel brave I try a new genre or cuisine. When I feel sad I eat a lot of butter. When I feel angry or confused I bake things that don’t look pretty. When I feel lonely I bake things with cinnamon and nutmeg.

To wit, this pumpkin bread almost didn’t come to be because it was an untested recipe and I have been feeling very anti-bold of late. Some days I am voraciously poring over new recipes, thinking, oooh mama I can’t wait to try that. Those days I put my finger in so many different pots that I run out of fingers. And pots. Lately I have been a bit timid. I don’t feel like trying something new only to find out it sucks. I look at recipes and I think, how can I KNOW? There is no guarantee! I just don’t feel like being disappointed by a new recipe because I get my hopes up and then it turns out to be something different than I imagined. I don’t feel like being BURNED any more, people. WAH.

But the moral of the story is my intense longing for all things fall and home and holidays overpowered my trepidation, and I sacked up and sleuthed out slash made up a recipe for the kind of pumpkin bread that would make me feel warm inside. Because fuck timidity. Fuck that shit. It’s time to be bold again, friends.

And it worked, internet. It satisfied the exact craving I was having, which was essentially that I needed to eat something that tasted like 25 years worth of New York autumns. That tasted like soccer games and wood-burning stoves firing up for the first time all season and hot tea and oatmeal in the morning and hikes in the woods. So I ate about half a loaf (at least) and watched TV and drank bedtime tea and promised myself that I wouldn’t let myself not be brave just because things don’t always work out. Because sometimes they do. But, you know. You just don’t know until you try.

Raisin-Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread
adapted from several sources

2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 cup plain yogurt
3/4 cup chocolate chips
3/4 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 350. Grease 2 loaf pans.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and salt. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the honey, pumpkin puree, and plain yogurt. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix just to combine. Stir in the chocolate chips and raisins. Pour into the loaf pans and cook for 50 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

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