When you have a kid that just doesn’t have the ability to leave a pumpkin behind… you have to improvise. And given just how many pie pumpkins I’ve had to buy this year because of my whole “well, we can leave it out for decoration for a little bit, then cook it” leave nothing to waste mentality – paired with those giant brown eyes my adorable tot has.

Okay, sometimes this momma just can’t say no.

I had a lot of deja vu moments of when I used to make purees for baby food when he was a wee thing.

But this time, I got to make some surprisingly tasty things for all of us to eat. Not just him. Those cookies…

I didn’t  want to make cookies again right off, so I looked around for other ideas or options and decided that I was going to be crazy and try my hand at bread.

Which found me, set up in my kitchen for an entire Sunday morning, bake-bake-baking away. Because it ended up more than one loaf, and more than one kind of bread.

The recipe I used came from my favorite online recipe source, A Taste of Home. I can’t say online recipe source, because I have about 10 different cookbooks from them as well that I purchased way back (way, way back) when I was just learning this cooking thing – and was a part of a book club. Remember those? I think it was Literary Guild or something like that. Ahhh, the smell of a fresh stack of books I spent way too much money on…

Back to baking:

My edits to this recipe (which I know, makes the baking world cringe because you’re not supposed to mess with anything in baking. It’s like it throws the whole balance of everything off and you end up with a blob monster in your kitchen trying to eat your dog or something…) nixed the nutmeg and cloves. Why? Because oddly enough, despite having nutmeg in my cupboard, I rarely use it and my child hasn’t had it yet. Same with cloves. And no on the walnuts – because I have a weird, random allergy that includes walnuts in the bunch.

Also feel the need to add: we are fine. The pumpkin apple bread didn’t climb out of my oven and eat my dog. He’s happily snoozing on his stack of pillows, like a King.

So my bread was lacking the chunkiness on the chunky in the recipe title.

Chunky Apple Pumpkin Bread

Ingredients

• 1-2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1-1/2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 1 cup chopped peeled tart apples
• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder and cloves. In another large bowl, whisk the pumpkin, water, eggs and oil. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in apples and walnuts.

2. Pour into a greased 9×5-in. loaf pan. Bake at 325° for 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 hours or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack to cool.