Pumpkin Bread with Sweet Cheese Frosting

Some days you just need cheese. But again, some days you just need sweets too. So what do you do? If you are me, you scour recipes until you find something somewhat close to what you are looking for then do stuff to it until it sounds appealing. Then you make it and hope and hope and hope that it ends up edible.

Lucky for me this recipe fell into the “happy experiment” category. I had a sweet/cheese craving and found a recipe for pumpkin muffins. But honestly, I was not feeling the muffin making vibe. I love muffins but some days are just dump it in a bowl, dump in in a pan and cook it up days. This is one of those recipes and when you taste it, it will taste like you put a LOT of effort into it even thought it was mix, stir, dump, cook and glop frosting on. I won’t tell that it’s simple if you won’t tell that I admitted to having food lazy days:)

Pumpkin Bread with Sweet Cheese Frosting

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 40 minutes | Makes: 1 loaf

Ingredients

For the Bread

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup pure pumpkin puree
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1 1/3 cup all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

For the Sweet Cheese Frosting

• 3 tablespoons butter, softened
• 3 ounces of cream cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon real vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup confectioners sugar

Directions

1. In a large bowl or stand mixer, mix together the pumpkin puree, sugar, egg and canola oil and blend until well combined
2. Add salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, baking powder, baking soda and half of the flour and mix well. Add remaining flour and mix until smooth and few lumps are left in batter
3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and generously grease a bread pan with shortening or butter
4. Add batter to pan and bake in oven for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in to the center comes out clean (no dough stuck to it)
5. While bread is baking add butter, cream cheese, sugar and vanilla to a medium bowl or bowl of a mixer and mix until well combined and no lumps are left in the frosting
6. Once bread is cooked, allow to cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing from pan and placing on a wire cooking rack
7. Allow bread to cool for additional 15-20 minutes or until you are able to touch without it burning you
8. Using a flat spatula or table knife, spread cream cheese mixture over bread and allow to set for 20-30 minutes
9. Dig into all that cheesy, sweet goodness!

Tips

• Since it does have cheese and butter, I do recommend putting this sweet treat in the refrigerator and just popping it in the oven or microwave for a bit (5 minutes in 350 oven or 45 seconds in the microwave) when you want a taste. And truth be told, I’ve eaten it cold right from the fridge more than I have heated it and it still tastes very yummy!
• For this recipe make sure you use canned pumpkin puree or fresh puree (learn to make it yourself here) and not pumpkin pie mix. The mix already has spices added to it so if you make it with that and then add the spices you may have an explosion of spice. If you do want to try to make with pie mix, I highly recommend omitting the cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger and then letting me know how it tastes! Let me know on Facebook at Little Prairie Kitchen, Instagram @littleprairiekitchen or Twitter @lprairiekitchen. I love to see you guys make the recipes your own!