I’m going to confess, I hadn’t planned to share this recipe originally. Much as I loved it, and think the crumb topping is a unique twist, I wondered if another pumpkin bread recipe really needed a home on the internet.
Then I devoured a slice from the thawed loaf that had been in the chest freezer for a couple of weeks. It is quite possible this bread after being frozen and thawed in the fridge overnight is even better than when freshly baked. And therein lies a tip I offer to you even if you decide to eat it soon after baking—chill this bread before serving!
I can’t believe I just wrote that because as a general rule of thumb I do not refrigerate cakes unless there's a whipped cream element to it. Chilling usually makes for a dense crumb which I don’t really like, but in this case, for a cake that packs a little heft, chilling helps form a sturdier crumb—this is strictly my opinion, so I do encourage you to do a taste test to see if you prefer it at room temperature or chilled. It could just be a quirk of my own palate, so I’m very curious for you all to chime in once you bake it.
This is what I like to call a twofer cake, as in two for one—it makes two loaves, meaning you get to enjoy one and share the love with a friend by gifting the second loaf. At least this was my intention. I’d baked both loaves, planning to bring one into work the next day. The weather had other plans, dropping buckets of rain along with flood warnings. Minutes before leaving for the train, I decided it was a safer choice to skip my in-office day that week, and work from home. There’s no way we would go through two loaves, so I tucked the one I’d wrapped up for work into a ziptop bag and stored it in the chest freezer in the basement.
Because I’m a perfectionist (to a fault), and I’d never frozen this bread, I decided it would not be destined for the office. I couldn’t face the reality it might not be as good as its freshly baked counterpart, so decided to taste it with my morning coffee a few days ago—and that’s how I ended up deciding that, yes—yes, we all need another pumpkin bread recipe in our lives, especially one that has a pumpkin-seed streusel topping.
Hope the week is a gentle one—xo, j.