Challenge #19: Pumpkin Pie Snickerdoodles

As evidenced by our last posts, Nora and I ❤ autumn. What better way than to celebrate than with some of the Crepes of Wrath’s Pumpkin Pie Snickerdoodles?  I’ll never eat or make snickerdoodles without thinking of our friend Blaine, who loves them; I am also a person who would walk over hot coals for snickerdoodles, so he and I share that. When I found this recipe, I thought, “I HAVE TO EAT THESE TODAY.”

Pumpkin-beer bread: Portland

BAKER’S NOTE: My camera wasn’t working again (but it’s fine now), so I was relegated to these sub-par phone photos. It doesn’t really do the pumpkiny goodness justice, but you get the point.

I love quick breads, I love pumpkin, and I love beer. This recipe perfectly combines the trifecta into a moist, spicy loaf that’s almost like a cake. In fact, I was tempted to add cream cheese frosting to make it fancy. But I got lazy, as so often happens. The bread itself, though, was incredibly easy and tasy. So easy, in fact, that I made it three times in a week. Two were for work (before I left for vacation), and one was for my family reunion in Nebraska.

First, the dry ingredients, including the necessary spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, etc.),went together. It’s not a pumpkin dish without those three spices.

Next, after the butter was melted, the brown sugar, vanilla, egg, pumpkin and beer came together on the stove. For the pumpkin beer, I chose Elysian (a brewery out of Seattle), which has an owl on its label. I’ve been trying a lot of pumpkin beers at this place we go for trivia every week because they switch nearly every time I go in, so I’ve had my fair share this fall. In baking, the quality of the beer isn’t as important, but for straight drinking, this one was pretty good. For the family reunion loaf, I used O’Fallon Pumpkin Beer, which produced pretty much the same effect.

Next, the dry and the wet ingredients came together in typical fashion, at which point they went into my trusty loaf pan (below) to bake more a little more than an hour.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a good picture of the finished product (next challenge, I’ll have my camera back), but I can say that this bread turned out incredibly moist and sweet. As I said before, almost like cake.