Pumpkin Bread with Brown Butter and Bourbon

When my husband Daniel was a child, his mom made pumpkin bread for the holidays every year. He's often reminisced about it, waxing poetic about how simple and delicious it was -- no nuts, no chocolate chips, just a smooth, moist loaf cake imbued with autumnal spices. At some point he had an index card with the recipe written on it, but it disappeared, and his mother no longer remembers how she made it.

For years, I've been meaning to try and approximate the recipe. Food and love and memory…right up my alley.

Finally, a little too late for Christmas, I made the cake, and I can tell you that although the ingredients scream Thanksgiving, it's a lovely cake that I'd welcome on my plate anytime of the year (okay maybe not in the summer, but anytime when the weather is cold).

A confession: since I made this the weekend of New Year's, after all the cooking from the weeks before, I took the easy route and used canned pumpkin puree. I did however pick up an organic brand and it was actually better than the standard Libby's—it was brighter and fresher-tasting.

Any chance to use brown butter is a chance I'll take, but after all the holiday baking my fridge was a bit low on butter. So I used a half cup of brown butter, and a half cup of olive oil. But any liquid fat will do—you need one cup and could use all olive oil, or canola oil, or all melted butter, or all brown butter.

And about all that yummy butter. Let's not deceive ourselves. This recipe is for Pumpkin "Bread" but it's really a cake. A delicious, loaf-shaped cake that would also make perfect "muffins" (aka, cupcakes…with perhaps some yummy cream-cheese frosting). Pumpkin is full of fiber and good nutrition, true, but here it's used in what is best described as a dessert. Or at least a sweet afternoon snack with a nice cup of strong tea.

According to Daniel, his mom used to cut the sugar back every year when she made the bread, and it was always good, so feel free to cut back on some of the sugar if you like.

And as for Daniel, he adored it. And as I watched him cut himself a thick slice, smear it with salty, soft butter, and take his first bite, I felt a warm surge of happiness. I knew I could never replicate his mother's Pumpkin Bread (even if I did have the recipe), but creating a version for him was my way of including his past in our family's future. I'll certainly be making this again.

Pumpkin Bread with Brown Butter and Bourbon

1/2 cup butter

1/4 cup bourbon (or water or apple cider)

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 3/4 cups pumpkin puree, homemade or canned (a 15 ounce can)

4 eggs

1/2 cup olive or other oil (canola for example)

2 cups all purpose flour

1 3/4 cups brown sugar

1 cup whole-wheat flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

1. Preheat oven to 350º F, and arrange a rack in the center. Grease the inside of two 8-inch loaf pans with butter.

2. In a large skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to medium and cook until the frothy white milk solids sink to the bottom of the pan and turn a fragrant, nutty brown, 5 to 7 minutes. Brown butter can burn quickly, so watch it carefully. Another tip: when the frantic sound of bubbling begins to die down, that is when you know your brown butter is almost ready, so use your ears as well as your eyes and nose for this one.

3. In a glass liquid measuring cup, combine bourbon and vanilla and add water until you reach the 2/3 cup mark. In a large bowl, whisk together bourbon, vanilla, water, pumpkin puree, eggs, and olive oil. With a spatula, scrape all the brown butter from the skillet into the pumpkin mixture and stir to combine.

4. In another large bowl, whisk together, all purpose flour, brown sugar, whole-wheat flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom. Pour liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir to combine.

5. Divide batter into the two greased loaf pans. Set pans onto a rimmed baking sheet and place in oven. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes or until a tester or toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

6. Allow bread to cool completely before removing from pan.

NOTE: I also made this exact recipe with applesauce instead of pumpkin puree, and used all brown butter and no oil, and left out the spices and doubled the vanilla and it was lovely. In case you happen to have lots of applesauce in the fridge as I did this week.