I’ve written before about how much I hate dry, mealy protein puddings. The only reliable solution I’ve found is adding canned pumpkin to the mix, which leaves it velvety-smooth and fudgy.
Which begs the question: can the addition make my “regular” bakes tastier, too?
After all, the addition is known to add “extraordinary moisture and softness” to cakes, muffins, and other delights.
Plus, I found myself with a load of leftover puree, along with some very old bananas, recently. Have necessity and curiosity ever been so perfectly aligned?
I needed to try a pumpkin banana bread ASAP.
Why does pumpkin make baked goods so soft?
As with all things baking, it’s chemistry, baby.
When pumpkin cooks, its starches fill with water, swell, and eventually burst. These carbohydrates then release molecules that create a gel.
In turn, this substance binds to more water, keeping the baked item moist.
This is all part of a normal process called starch gelatinisation, which is not unique to pumpkins. But the vegetable does have another, more unique property: along with those useful starches, it contains about 90% water.
The vegetable’s starches therefore have more liquid than usual to draw from during the baking process.
Not only that, but the process means the end product will take longer to get stale than it would without the addition of pumpkin. And a sugar in the plant, pectin (the kind that helps jam set), means crumbs stay fluffy and soft, but never crumbly.
Sooo… how did it taste?
I made a Bakes By Brown Sugar recipe, which included a welcome cinnamon crumb top.
For the loaf itself, I melted some butter, combined my sugars and spices (including a DIY pumpkin spice mix), placed the dry ingredients in yet another bowl, and mashed my bananas.
Then, I added an egg to the sugar mix before incorporating butter, vanilla, banana, tinned pumpkin, and later, flour.
The whole thing went in the oven for just under an hour (it should have been longer, but I think my oven’s temperature was too high: mine caught a bit on the top).
The result was, in my partner’s words, the “best banana bread” they’ve ever tried.
In terms of flavour, the earthy pumpkin worked brilliantly with those warming autumn spices, and stopped the banana from becoming too simple and sweet.
But the texture really wowed me here. Though the cake wasn’t gooey in any spot, it was impossibly moist and fluffy; sometimes, I find you have to choose between a tender, defined crumb and adequate moisture in a banana bread, but this had both.
In a word, I’d describe the bite as “velvety”. And yes, it did stay that way for multiple days – more than I can say for many of the “regular” banana bread recipes I’ve tried in the past.
Overall, the addition delivered everything it promised and more (with the added bonus of being deliciously seasonal). It’ll be a while until I return to the unenlightened pumpkin-free days of yore – if I ever do.
