This bread is made by the creaming method, starting with a stick (110 g) of butter, 1¾ oz (50 g) of granulated sugar, and 7½ oz (215 g) of brown sugar; I used India Tree brand dark muscovado for the brown sugar, which brings a wonderful molassesey moistness to pretty much everything. The other wet ingredients are three large eggs, a teaspoon of vanilla, and the aforementioned cup (9½ oz, 270 g) of homemade pumpkin purée. On the dry team, it’s 100% whole-wheat flour, half a pound (225 g) of it, along with a teaspoon of baking soda, half a teaspoon each of baking powder and salt, the usual spices (½ tsp cinnamon, ½ tsp cloves, and ¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg), three ounces (85 g) of chopped nuts — I used pecans, toasted of course — and 4½ ounces (130 g) of dried fruit. Since it is that time of year, I chose to use dried cranberries for my fruit, but you could use raisins or dried cherries instead.

This quickbread is made, as I said, by the creaming method, and one stick of butter is just not enough to cream in the stand mixer, so I got out my hand mixer and creamed the butter alone (this involved some swapping of containers) before adding the sugars and beating well. One downside of the dark muscovado is that it can be a bit lumpy — I generally find that the lumps bake out just fine, but it can be a bit disconcerting to look down in the bowl and see all these brown lumps interrupting your nice creamed butter-and-sugar mixture.

The three eggs are added, one at a time, scraping the bowl between each addition, along with the vanilla. At this point, it looks as much like a cookie batter as a bread dough, although with three eggs it has more water and less fat than most cookies.

Because the dark muscovado is so dark, it’s not that easy to tell that the pumpkin purée has been added. At this point, the flour, leaven, and spices are sifted together in another bowl, then carefully mixed in — I put down the hand mixer and just folded with a spatula — followed by the nuts and dried fruit. The dough, although thicker, is still pourable at this point, and it is baked in a prepared 9×5-inch (230 mm×130 mm) loaf pan at 350°F (175°C) for about an hour, until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean.

After cooling in the pan for about 20 minutes, the pumpkin bread is depanned and allowed to cool completely on a wire rack; this is important to ensure that the crust doesn’t get soggy. (If you like soft, sticky crusts, by all means leave it in there, but I prefer some texture.) You might think this bread was overbaked by the way it looks on the outside, but that’s really a result of the dark brown sugar. Once cool, it can be wrapped in a clean tea towel until ready to portion and serve.

Of course for me, “portion and serve” means “pack up to bring to work and feed my colleagues” — which is just what I did. The recipe headnote says that it makes 16 servings, and I think that’s pretty reasonable. Rather than trying to cut 16 even, thin slices crosswise, I chose instead to slice the loaf in half lengthwise, and then cut 8 crosswise slices, giving the appearance of a more substantial serving (so much so that several tasters wanted to cut my pieces in even smaller chunks).

I think both the pecans and the dried cranberries were fabulous here, adding just the right amount of texture, and the perfect complement to the molasses flavor of the dark muscovado and the hearty whole-wheat flour. I did not receive a single negative comment on this one, not even from tasters I know to be fussy and exacting. Highly recommended.

Nutrition