Fall. Glorious Fall.

Oh, hello again.

So last night was a little mini fall festival in our house. I baked up some pumpkin chocolate chip bread, and made some cheddar potato soup (don't get too impressed with that one--it's a mix). Suffice to say, the house smelled glorious when Brian got home from work.

The sudden change in weather here is what brought about this urge to bake and eat/drink warm things. I had my first hot tea of the season this morning! The pumpkin bread came on a whim at about 5pm last night. I had opened a can of pumpkin the other day (I was convinced out new "no-edge" can opener was broken so I tried opening a few things... turns out I was just doing it wrong) and while the cats had enjoyed a small amount of it, it needed to be used. I found a few recipes online for a "healthy" pumpkin bread, and the one below was the only one where I already had all the ingredients at the house--winner! I of course added a bit of my own flair (the chocolate chips), and it turned out pretty darn good if I do say so myself!

Healthy Pumpkin Bread Recipe

From Good Housekeeping

Ingredients

• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 large egg whites
• 1 cup pure pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1/3 cup low-fat plain yogurt (*I actually just used vanilla yogurt and cut out the vanilla extract below)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• *Handful of chocolate chips :)

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Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray 8 1/2" by 4 1/2" metal loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray with flour.
2. In large bowl, with wire whisk, combine brown sugar and egg whites. Add pumpkin, oil, yogurt, and vanilla extract; stir to combine.
3. In medium bowl, combine all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture; stir until just combined.
4. Add chocolate chips at this point. Do not overmix.
5. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 45 to 50 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of loaf comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes. Invert pumpkin bread onto wire rack; cool completely.

Each slice (without choc chips) has about 140 calories, 4g fat and 25g carbs.