Chai Spiced Pumpkin Bread with Walnuts

If you're like me you've been pumpkin obsessed since about July. I'm super excited for fall, which finally arrived in Georgia last week, yay for cozy layers! And of course fall means making as many pumpkin recipes as humanly possible before December. Why before December you may be asking yourself...well December means winter, and winter means no pumpkin because pumpkin is reserved for fall, and no, I haven't yet met the person that can board this crazy train called my mind.  So, to get back to the point, I've been pinning pumpkin recipes like crazy and came across this delicious sounding Bobby Flay recipe for Pumpkin Bread Pudding with Spicy Caramel Apple Sauce and Vanilla Bean Creme Anglaise.  Of course, if you know me, I am extremely impatient and I go for relatively quick and simple recipes (frosting a cake is nearly beyond me because I can never wait until the cake is completely cool before applying the icing, which = messy but delicious disaster), so I decided to make the pumpkin bread portion, with some changes. For some reason we don't have a lot of the spices in the house so I had to improvise and used chai tea since it has a lot of the same spices...plus some :), and it came out rather delicious and extremely popular, hellz yeah. So here we go, I hope you find it as tasty as my family and I did.

Chai Spiced Pumpkin Bread with Walnuts

3 Tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon
 
1 1/2 cups dark brown sugar

1/4 cup + 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil (or canola, whichever you keep on hand)

8 ounces (about 1 cup) canned unsweetened pumpkin puree (make sure you read the lable because it's easy to accidentally pick up pumpkin pie filling which already has the sugar and spices, I always use Libby's canned pumpkin puree)

2 Large eggs

1 2oz bag plus half of another 2oz bag of walnuts

2/3 cup chai tea (room temperature, room temperature is important because for most of your baking you want everything at the same temperature, so I pull out the eggs and leave them beside the butter while it's softening, I also went ahead and steeped 2 bags of tea in 2/3 cup boiling water at the same time that I pulled out the butter and eggs, and left the tea bags in the water until I was ready to make the bread to get a really strong chai flavor)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly spray the bottom and sides of a 9-inch loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray.

Whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon in a small bowl

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment beat the butter, brown sugar, and oil at high speed until light and fluffy, about 1 minute, scraping down the sides and bottom of the bowl a few times (don't do the scraping while you have the paddle going, it likes to whip the rubber spatula out of your hands...no bueno).

Add the pumpkin puree and mix until combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix until just incorporated. At low speed, slowly add the flour mixture and chai tea and mix until just combined (make sure you add the flour at low speed, if you still have in on high speed flour explodes everywhere, you look like a ghost and your family and friends laugh mercilessly at your expense). 

Chop your walnuts to the consistency that you prefer, and fold about 2/3 of your walnuts into your batter (this will also give you a chance to fold in the rest of the flour that tends to linger at the bottom of the bowl when you're using your stand mixer...be careful not to over mix though, it messes up your bread's consistency). Spread the batter into your prepared pan and sprinkle the remaining walnuts along the top (and do you know what would be good? Make a streusel topping with the walnuts to put on top of your pumpkin bread, yum!). Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 60-75 minutes. Let cool in the pan on a baking rack for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and serve.