Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Chip Streusel

This is a long delayed post that I started writing around the Thanksgiving holiday and never got around to posting -- better late than never, I suppose.

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I've written about Thanksgiving before. I have a special fondness for the holiday. Other than the fact that is is the only four day break of the year for many Americans (Thanksgiving -- always a Thursday, Day after Thanksgiving, and the weekend that follows), what makes it different from other holidays is that it is truly national in character. Thanksgiving - to my knowledge - does not know religion or race. It is the biggest travel day in the U.S. Friends and colleagues of all stripes seem to travel home for the long weekend to celebrate with family.

Although turkey and gravy is traditional, not all families have these as the centerpieces of their Thanksgiving table. A few years ago, the New York Times featured over a dozen American families and the dishes that graced their Thanksgiving tables. The piece talked about a pumpkin flan which to a Cuban family represented a melding of their roots and their more recent exposure to Thanksgiving traditions in the U.S., a Somali rice dish which sounds like a lot like biryani, a recipe for Cantonese style turkey, complete with a picture of turkey legs glistening in a shiny soy sauce marinade, and arroz con leche ("rice and milk"), a Mexican rendition of rice pudding.

The streets are always quiet at Thanksgiving because nearly everyone is home with their families, no doubt recovering from a coma induced by their own unique Thanksgiving feast. To top it off, this year we had our very first rain of the season in San Francisco over that weekend, which meant that the few who may otherwise have ventured out chose to stay indoors. The rain washed away much of the smoke from the most recent destructive wildfires in California, and gave us all additional reason to be thankful over the holiday weekend. 

The other nice thing about Thanksgiving is that it truly marks the beginning of the end of the year. Not long after the last crumbs from Thanksgiving dinner are cleared away, December rolls around. Before you can blink, it is time to put up the Christmas tree, stuff oneself silly at long holiday lunches at work, and write long lists of impossible resolutions for the new year.

It feels good to be in that too-brief interlude between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The tree is up, I am trying to decide which recipes to try out over the holidays, and hoping that things will wind down at work now that we are so close to the end of the year. 

One of the recipes that I experimented with over Thanksgiving season is Melissa Clark's recipe for pumpkin bread with chocolate chip streusel. If I had to do things over, I would not sprinkle half of the streusel over the bread. The sugar stays gritty at the end of the end of the baking time, and I am not a fan of the crunch of granulated sugar. Half of the streusel is sandwiched inside the bread, where it turns into a rich, chocolaty, gooey, and altogether delicious band of sweetness, a nice complement to the pumpkin flavor. That part I would keep -- it really is the best thing about this cake.



NYT's Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Chip Streusel (makes 1 regular sized loaf)

FOR THE STREUSEL:

1⁄4 cup packed light brown sugar 
1⁄4 cup packed dark brown sugar 
1⁄4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans 
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1⁄4 teaspoon ground ginger
1⁄2 tablespoon cold butter
1⁄4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

FOR THE CAKE:
1 1⁄2 cups all­purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
3⁄4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1⁄2 cup granulated sugar
1⁄2 cup light brown sugar
1⁄2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
2 large eggs
1⁄2 cup canned pumpkin
1⁄2 cup sour cream
1⁄2 tablespoon dark rum
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

PREPARATION

Step 1

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a nonstick 9-inch loaf pan. (Or, if the pan is not nonstick, line with parchment paper and butter the paper.)
Step 2
Prepare the streusel: In a bowl, combine the brown sugars, nuts, cinnamon and ginger. Cut in butter with pastry blender or your fingers until mixture is crumbly. Divide the mixture in half and add the chocolate chips to one half. Leave the other plain and set it aside for the topping.
Step 3
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.
Step 4
In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat sugars and butter until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add pumpkin, sour cream, rum and vanilla extract; mix well. Gradually beat in flour mixture.
Step 5
Spoon half of the batter into pan. Sprinkle the chocolate chip streusel over the batter, not allowing streusel to touch sides of pan. Top
with remaining batter. Make sure batter layer touches edges of pan. Sprinkle remaining streusel on the top.
Step 6
Bake for about 40 to 50 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in cake comes out clean. Cool for 30 minutes in pan on wire rack. Unmold and cool completely. 

Notes: I eliminated ground ginger, and replaced the rum in the cake with an additional tsp of vanilla extract. I also reduced the amount of sugar in the cake and it was still plenty sweet. The sugar in the streusel can also be safely reduced. I replaced the sour cream with yoghurt, and used walnuts instead of pecans.