Pumpkin Cider Bread makes a terrific fall treat

Pumpkin Cider Bread is a yummy fall treat. You can use prepared pumpkin, or cook one of your leftover pumpkins after Halloween. It also makes a tasty gift for the holidays.

Anne Cori, the owner of the Kitchen Conservatory in St. Louis, says she likes to give homemade food gifts because they are special and immediately gratifying—one doesn’t have to wait to start enjoying. Anne knows all about enjoying food, having worked in restaurants in France, Italy, and New Orleans before opening her own catering business and then purchasing the Kitchen Conservatory in 1997. Under Anne’s guidance, the shop and cooking school have flourished, becoming a culinary center offering about 800 cooking classes per year plus selling high-quality products that good cooks need to pamper their kitchens.

Learn more about the Kitchen Conservatory after the recipe.

Pumpkin Cider Bread

Ingredients
1 cup apple cider
1 cup prepared pumpkin or butternut squash puree
2 eggs
1⁄4 cup butter
3⁄4 cup brown sugar
Zest of one orange
2 cups flour
1-1⁄2 teaspoons baking soda
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
1⁄4 teaspoon cinnamon
1⁄4 teaspoon ground ginger
1⁄4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

Directions

1. In a saucepan, bring the cider to a boil and cook until reduced to 1⁄4 cup. Let cool.
2. To prepare the pumpkin or butternut squash, use a boning knife to cut the squash in half. Use a pitting spoon to scoop out the seeds and discard. Place on a sheet pan. Roast at 350 ̊ F until soft, about an hour. Puree the pulp in a food processor. Whisk a cup of the squash with cider, eggs, butter, sugar, and orange zest.
3. Mix together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. Fold into the pumpkin mixture. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake at 350 ̊ F for an hour or until a cake tester comes out clean. Yields one loaf.

More about the Kitchen Conservatory

The Kitchen Conservatory sports two classrooms. The one primarily for demonstration classes holds eighteen students. The other, for participation programs, seats twenty-four.

About 200 different instructors (including Anne) teach classes that cost $40 to $85 and cover a wide range of topics from the basics of cooking to the intricacies of ethnic foods. Kitchen Conservatory offers classes to adults, children, singles, and couples as well as customized special cooking programs for private parties and corporate events.

In addition to running the school and teaching regular classes, Anne has compiled the best Kitchen Conservatory recipes into a cookbook, A Passion for Cooking. Her personal recipe collection overflows with great food gifts. She picked pumpkin cider bread from her cornucopia as a favorite to share with us.

Anne suggests baking the bread in sturdy paper loaf pans, which are sold in a variety of sizes. The bread does not have to be removed from the pan to cool, and the pans are attractive enough that the cook needs only to tie on a ribbon for gift-giving.

This article first appeared in the December 2012 issue of Missouri Life. Subscribe to Missouri Life today.