Fabulously Moist Pumpkin Bread with Walnuts #Recipe by @Libby Klein

Libby Klein The merest hint of chill in the air, the first leaf to turn colors, and I fly into action baking fall treats. Autumn is my favorite time of year and I will it to start when the days are so muggy you need a shower after checking the mailbox at the end of the driveway. 

Pumpkin bread isn't new, and I'm not doing anything special with it here. But this is a fantastically moist recipe that turns out every time. If you want to fancy it up, try a sprinkle of pumpkin seeds on top of the loaves before they go into the oven. Or make a cheesecake spread or orange honey butter to slather on the slices and eat them for dessert or breakfast.

Quick breads are muffins made in loaf pans, so they could not be easier. Mix your dry ingredients in one bowl, your wet ingredients in another, then combine them. Fold in your extras and pour into pans. Voila. The house smells like Fall. You're welcome.

I'll use any excuse to put nuts in a recipe. If they're optional, I always use the option. How about you? What do you add to pumpkin bread? Or are you a purist adding nothing but the love? Let me know in the comments.

Fabulously Moist Pumpkin Bread with Walnuts

Yield 2 loaves

1 (15-ounce) can pumpkin puree
4 large eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
⅔ cup water
3 cups white sugar
3 ½ cups gluten-free 1-to1 flour (or all-purpose flour)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon Pumpkin Pie Spice (I love the Spicewalla blend)
1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

Gather the ingredients. Preheat the oven to 350°. Grease and flour two 9x5-inch loaf pans.

Whisk flour, baking soda, salt, and spice together in a large bowl. 

Mix pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water, and sugar in a separate bowl until well blended. Fold in the walnuts.

Stir flour mixture into pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour batter into the prepared pans.

Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 50 minutes.

Layla Virtue, a blue-haired, 30-something recovering alcoholic and former cop is trying to reinvent herself as a musician—between AA meetings, dodging eccentric neighbors at her trailer park, and reconnecting with her mysterious dad—in this ​unforgettable new mystery brimming with hilarity and heart.

Layla is taking her new life one day at a time from the Lake Pinecrest Trailer Park she now calls home. Being alone is how she likes it. Simple. Uncomplicated. Though try telling that to the group of local ladies who are in relentless pursuit of Layla as their new BFF, determined to make her join them for coffee and donuts.

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Libby Klein writes ridiculously funny murder mysteries from her Northern Virginia office with a very naughty calico Persian named Miss Eliza Doolittle, and a sweet black Lab named Vader. She can name that tune for 70s and 80s rock in the first few notes, and she's translated her love of classic rock into her Layla Virtue Mysteries. Libby was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that prevents her from eating gluten without exploding. Because bread is one of her love languages, she includes the recipes for gluten free goodies in her Cape May based Poppy McAllister series. Most of her hobbies revolve around travel, and eating, and eating while traveling. She insists she can find her way to any coffee shop anywhere in the world, even while blindfolded. Follow all of her nonsense on her website www.LibbyKleinBooks.com/Newsletter/