As I chronicled earlier, I was still delinquent in making a thank you gift for our neighbor Missy, who had graciously put together a delicious dinner for us on our first night in our new home.I had initially made her a lemon tart, but that proved to be too tempting for my mother to resist and it never made it out of the house.
Not wanting the same thing to happen again, I took things in a different direction and decided to make an autumnal bread that would work for dessert, but also breakfast, toasted and slathered with butter or cream cheese.
I had just gotten a wonderful new cookbook called The Craft of Baking by Karen DeMasco and Mindy Fox (DeMasco was the pastry chef for Tom Colicchio's Craft restauarnts), and I pretty much want to make everything in it (like the apple fritters I'm planning on making for the fam this weekend) but I zeroed in on her pumpkin spice bread. DeMasco actually recommends using canned pumpkin purée—which I also think is as good as fresh pumpkin purée—and then you add flavor with spices like cinnamon, ground cloves, white pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg.
Besides the spices and flour, the batter includes a mixture of sugar, brown sugar, one egg and one egg yolk, grapeseed oil (which has a neutral flavor) and sour cream.
Once the pumpkin mixture is poured into the buttered loaf pan (with a layer of parchment paper on the bottom) DeMasco suggests sprinkling a layer of Demerara sugar (washed raw cane sugar which is more crystalized than brown sugar and adds a molasses flavor) on the top before baking, which lends a sweet and crunchy top.
I like this idea so much that I did the same with the pumpkin pancakes I made this weekend (I used a basic pancake recipe but incorporated a half cup of pumpkin puree into the batter), dusting one side of the pancake before flipping--it made the pancakes even better.
I had just gotten a wonderful new cookbook called The Craft of Baking by Karen DeMasco and Mindy Fox (DeMasco was the pastry chef for Tom Colicchio's Craft restauarnts), and I pretty much want to make everything in it (like the apple fritters I'm planning on making for the fam this weekend) but I zeroed in on her pumpkin spice bread. DeMasco actually recommends using canned pumpkin purée—which I also think is as good as fresh pumpkin purée—and then you add flavor with spices like cinnamon, ground cloves, white pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg.
Besides the spices and flour, the batter includes a mixture of sugar, brown sugar, one egg and one egg yolk, grapeseed oil (which has a neutral flavor) and sour cream. 
Once the pumpkin mixture is poured into the buttered loaf pan (with a layer of parchment paper on the bottom) DeMasco suggests sprinkling a layer of Demerara sugar (washed raw cane sugar which is more crystalized than brown sugar and adds a molasses flavor) on the top before baking, which lends a sweet and crunchy top. 
I like this idea so much that I did the same with the pumpkin pancakes I made this weekend (I used a basic pancake recipe but incorporated a half cup of pumpkin puree into the batter), dusting one side of the pancake before flipping--it made the pancakes even better.And I'm happy to report that despite it's irresistibility, this thank you actually made it out the door to Missy's house.—Caroline
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