Thankful Tuesdays: Recipe and Recriminations

Ok, not really recriminations, I just dig alliteration, and I happen to like that word.

“Retractions” perhaps? Yes, that would probably be the better word.

Yesterday I accidentally fatfingered a twitter re-tweet. For those of you who don’t know, a “re-tweet” is when you quote another person’s tweet to your own followers, usually adding some pithy comment of your own. In this case, I was excited that Kir over at The Kir Corner had tweeted her amazing achievement of finishing her NaNoWriMo novel. How awesome!

Not awesome? Me pear-shaping the re-tweet so that it looked like I was announcing that *I* had finished a NaNoWriMo novel.

ahem.

Well, as the name of my blog implies, I am not writing a novel. Maybe someday that will cease to be true (perhaps when I can do NaBloPoMo straight through without fail, or feed myself three times a day, or consistently take the trash out), but for now, it’s literal.

If you’re visiting today because some of my tweeps were kind enough to believe that I *could* finish a novel, took my mistaken tweet at face value, and re-tweeted my tweet to their many awesome tweeps (one of whom you may be), well, I’m afraid you were brought here under false pretenses, however unintentional.

But I’m happy you’re here anyway! It’s Thankful Tuesdays. Today I’m thankful that anyone could conceive that I’d actually managed to write a novel, and didn’t just laugh in derision when they saw the tweet. That’s pretty cool. Also, I’m happy for anyone new who comes to the site, regardless of how you got here, because I’m thankful for each and every one of my readers!

Because I’m so thankful for you all, I thought I’d share my recipe for Pumpkin Bread. Because IT’S SO GOOD I can’t even be modest about it. You need some, and you need some now. You’re welcome.

Oh – and before you get into this recipe, please visit my page dedicated to Twitter Literature 2011.  It’s a totally rad charity event that you MUST take part in, it will make you the envy of all your friends and a hero to those in need.

Venus’ Adulterated Alton Brown Pumpkin Bread
————————————————-
(dry)

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbspns ground cinnamon
(I use 1 tbspn Penzey’s Extra Fancy Vietnamese and 1 tbspn Penzey’s Korintje Indonesia. If you like cinnamon, and have regular store stuff, that’s fine, you may want to up it to 3 tbspns)
1 tbspn ground nutmeg
1/2 tbspn ground allspice
1/2 tbspn ground ginger
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

(wet)

1.5 cups sugar (yes, sugar is “wet” just go with me on this one)
3/4 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbspn bourbon

(add-ins)

3 cups shredded fresh pumpkin
(If you have previously shredded and frozen pumpkin in convenient 1-cup-sized packages, just put 3 in the fridge to thaw then use as normal. NO CANNED PUMPKIN!  Look, I’m not a pumpkin snob… it’s a texture thing, please believe me.)
1 tbspn finely diced candied orange peel
1 tbspn dried currants

1. Preheat oven to 325F degrees.
2. Prepare a 9″x5″ loaf pan by spreading your choice of tasty lipid on it then flouring (knock out extra flour).
3. Sift or whisk the dry ingredients in a bowl, making sure there aren’t any clumps and the seasoning is well-distributed.
4. Beat the eggs in a separate large (and I mean large) bowl.
5. Add remainder of wet ingredients to the eggs until combined (though it won’t be smooth).
6. Fold (and I do mean fold, not stir) in dry ingredients 1/2 cup at a time.
7. Fold in (yes, more folding, and if you grated pumpkin for this your arm is VERY tired by now, but hang in there, you’re almost done) the pumpkin about a cup at a time.
8. Fold (um, yes) in the other add-ins.
9. Make sure all sides and bottom of bowl are scraped so there aren’t stray chunks or lumps of anything that didn’t get incorporated.
10. Pour the whole unappetizing sticky mess into that loaf pan.
11. Bake at 325F degrees for somewhere between 1 hour to 1 hr 25 mins. This will depend largely on how awesome your oven is (ours was sent from the devil to plague us) and how many times you open the oven and let all the heat out. You’ll know it’s done when you can stick a knife (pointy, not dull) in the middle of the loaf and remove it without it coming away goopy.
12. Remove loaf pan from oven and set it on a rack to cool (somewhere away from the stove/oven – that thing vents heat for a while after you turn it off) for at least 15 minutes.
13. Turn out on to rack and continue to cool as long as you can stand to keep your greedy mitts off the stuff.

I like it straight up.  M likes it with homemade vanilla whipped cream on top.  Potayto, potahto.  We also discussed rehydrating the currants prior to use, probably in booze.  If you were to do that, I’d use bourbon for the rehydration and then decrease the bourbon in the wet ingredients to 1.2 tbspn.  Personally, I like the chewiness of the currants as they are.

As the name of the recipe states, this was based off of Alton Brown’s recipe found here.  I’d previously posted that I use the recipe from the Joy of Cooking, but I was wrong.

The shout-out for Penzey’s Spices was done simply because I like their stuff.  They’ve never heard of me, and haven’t given me any cool stuff for pimping their wares.  But Penzey’s, if you’re out there and want to reward me for this act of selfless kindness….