The Peculiar Pumpkin Bread Prank

I have had the pleasure in my short life to have been raised in a family where cooking from 'scratch' is considered the "norm". Even more so, I spent my early years studying my grandmother's techniques and developing my own using her skewed ways of never measuring with utensils and tasting your way through a good or unfortunate recipe.

I can say in my 30 plus years in the kitchen making meals from scratch and experimenting with updates to old favorites as well as new additions to my culinary resume that I have had s few miserable failures and some major triumphs.

One of my most memorable and most dismal failures was about 18 years ago, the dreaded Pumpkin Bread. Even though I have made many loaves of Pumpkin Bread since then and all have been wonderful, it is funny how everyone that came in contact with that first bread can remember it as clearly as if it happened just a moment ago.

What happened? Let me just say that I was reading a recipe from a very old cookbook that had been printed in Old World style English and the ingredient listing was not as organized as the recipe standards we have come to know and love today where the quantity is neatly lined up to the left of the ingredient name. Instead, the ingredients were listed in paragraph form with the directions with only a few commas in between. If you are familiar with Ernest Hemingway, I would dare say that this pumpkin bread recipe was written in his penmanship.

So, I was preparing the ingredient and ultimately measured out something like 1 ½ cups of salt and only 2 teaspoons of sugar. It sort of seemed weird to me, but the recipe was doubled in the book and I had a lot of fresh pumpkin I was working with, so for some reason it didn't register in my brain at the time. Everything else mixed pretty smoothly and I slid two loaves into the oven to bake at 350 degrees for the recommended time of 45 minutes.

Well, after 45 minutes had gone by, I opened the oven door and when leaning over, toothpick in hand, I noticed the loaves weren't even formed yet, they were both fairly liquid still. I checked the oven and it was certainly hot enough according to a hand thermometer I had on hand, so I closed the door and let them bake a half hour more.

Again, after 30 minutes passed on by, I opened the oven door letting the steam pass by my face before bending down with my trusty toothpick only to see that the loaves were at least formed but very jiggly on the racks from the movement of the door opening, much like gelatin. At this point, I had two college aged men in the kitchen also viewing the breads. They were anxious to sample them as the entire room was filled with warm pumpkin pie aromas, no signs of trouble in the air at all. I told the guys they were going to have to wait awhile as the loaves were not baked enough in the center, so come back in another 20 minutes or so. On went the timer for another 20 minutes and I put the interior light on in the oven so I could sit at the kitchen table and stare and the bread. Yes, I know the old adage that a watched pot never boils, but I have to say I was perplexed how two standard loaves were taking so long to firm up at 350 degrees.

Soon, I couldn't take it anymore, so after about 2 hours of baking, I removed the loaves. I popped one out onto a cooling rack and was impressed that although it seemed more flexible than a typical loaf of bread should be, it slid right out of the pan with ease, leaving no traces of crust or crumbs on the metal pan interior. Curious, I sliced the very end off of the bread and broke off the corner to put into my mouth. Yikes, it tasted like a pumpkin flavored Deer Lick! Just as I had done that, one of the two gentlemen returned to the kitchen as if lured by the aroma filled steam traveling into the other rooms of the house. Without missing a beat and before I could give warning, he also broke off a piece of the newly sliced bread and popped it into his mouth. I got quite the glare as he made eye contact with the trash can and proceeded to hurl the nugget from his lips to the can. Only then did it occur to both of us what had happened.

This friend of mine got the sudden urge to become a prankster and decided to get out the aluminum foil and plastic wrap. He told me of his conniving plan to wrap up a loaf and give it to his friend who had been with him earlier as a 'gag' gift. We both laughed over it, and agreed to package it up and send it off, as we both had a mutual fondness for April fool's Day style trickery.

The weird part of the whole experience was when what should have been the punch line of the pumpkin bread joke came, we called the mutual friend to ask him about his opinion of the bread and he exclaimed that he really enjoyed it and it was delicious. Maybe, he was serious or maybe he was pulling our legs in return. Either way, I learned a good lesson about tasting the batter before it goes into the oven. Sure, I may risk Salmonella for myself, but at least I won't be hurting my friends and families stomachs.

The Pumpkin Bread story gets a chuckle to this day and I found a great use for it too. I put slices of it in the cookie jar and it kept the cookies fresh and soft. The peculiar pumpkin bread turned out not so bad after all.