Fall Baking With Kids - Montessori Practical Life

Wait for it.... Wait for it....

IT'S FINALLY FALL!!!!

Okay, so I might be a little premature to call it Fall in the South, but the last part of last week, it sure felt like it! :)

Fall = BAKING


LM made her first ever solo batch of Pumpkin Bread.

This recipe is one that I can't say was handed down through the family with tons of secret, special ingredients. I will say, though, that it was a favorite growing up, and the tradition continues in my home now, with my children growing up loving it. It was also greatly associated with Fall, Thanksgiving, and Christmas time.

The recipe is so simple and easy to follow - you'll have great smells filling your house in under an hour!


You'll need:

3 cups sugar
1 cup oil
4 eggs, beaten
16 ounces pumpkin (canned or fresh!)
3 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ginger (not ale - typo in cookbook!)
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup hot water


Oh, and one handy helper!


First, cream sugar and oil - this is where a KitchenAid Mixer is going to come in real handy, so you can mix, measure, and pour all at the same time!



After sugar and oil have creamed, add eggs.




Then, add your pumpkin. We cheated and used canned pumpkin, but if you have fresh, feel free to use it! Confession - I've never tried it with fresh. It must be good, though!


Next, in a separate bowl, add dry ingredients - flour, salt, baking powder, and spices. 



Sift dry ingredients together, then add to pumpkin mix alternately with the hot water. 


When that's all in your mixer, and if you do have a wonderful KitchenAid, let it mix while you clean up what you have used and get ready for the oven.


Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.


I love my Pampered Chef mini loaf pans, but you can use any style of mini loaf pans you have. I highly recommend the mini loaves, versus the full loaf - it's less baking time and less chance of a slightly over-cooked bottom. Or, you can mix it up and make muffins or make it all at once, cake style. Just remember to adjust your baking times accordingly.


After spraying your baking dish well with non-stick spray, carefully fill at least halfway, though no more than 2/3 full. Be careful to make sure they are even, of course!


We like to sprinkle the tops with a little cinnamon sugar. It gives the bread a nice, sweet crunch :) .


Place in the oven, and set a timer for 30 minutes. At this point, check your bread. When the top is cracked and no longer looks wet, you'll know it's finished. With my mini-loaf pan, we actually bake ours for about 35 minutes. Just keep an eye on it and use good judgement from the 30 minute marker until you know it is finished. Another good way to check is the tried and true toothpick-in-the-center method.


After that, all that's left to do is.... 


ENJOY!

Comments

Post a Comment

I would love to hear what you think of this post! I do pray it has been a blessing, and would be honored to hear your ideas and suggestions!

Popular posts from this blog

To Succeed One Must Never Give Up

Image
Even if that means, the best you can is to blog a few times a year, and always tell yourself you'll pick it back up full time....eventually. Richard Bach said: "A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit" My friends, I claim that for my outSTANDing blogging skills ;) (as I type this, I realize I'm searching for the emoji buttons that surely should be somewhere by now hahaha!) We didn't quit. I mean, I obviously haven't been around this blog in what feels like eons. We are still here, though, alive and kicking!  KLW is going in to the 10th grade this year. When did someone come in my house and allow that to happen? Whoever did is going to get a tongue lashing from me, because this teenager is just a few years from adulthood, and I don't know how I feel about it, to be honest with you.  She's gorgeous.... Kind of quirky.... Has some killer selfie skills She's tall.... really REALLY t
Read more

Reader's Review - Llama Llama, Red Pajama

Image
LLama Llama, Red Pajama written and illustrated by  Anna Dewdney         You have GOT to love the Llama Llama books by Anna Dewdney! Using a llama as a subject, these books give you a different point of view - one of not the adult, but the child. In this particular Llama Llama book, it is a dreaded time of day - bed time! I don't know about you, but I can completely relate with some of my children. Llama Llama goes to bed, but there is a problem - little llama just can't settle down.     Full of bed time woes, the next couple of pictures show the climax of the distress this little llama is going through. What I find interesting here, in looking at this book a little deeper than just as a funny read for a child, is the emotion behind just such a feeling. A touch of seriousness - what if the thoughts our children are having at bed time are far more serious than we think? What may sound absurd to us - being afraid that we ar
Read more

Homeschool tidbits

Image
                               "This isn't so bad." - SW It wouldn't seem like such a big deal to hear that, except this is SW. She balks at everything new, and most things she's done before that were new. I know that sounds crazy, but if you just knew this girl. So this week, we've been working on the relationship between multiplication and division, and how you can use one to remember the other.  We had talked about this a little before our extended winter break, but since it had been a while, she may have had a slight breakdown when I reintroduced it. Thankfully, it was short lived! We are working through reviewing multiplication facts and discovering the art of division :) And honestly, she may be one of my most hard to teach at this point in life because of her tendency to be afraid of something new, despite the fact that she is ridiculously smart and almost always catches on immediately (even if she pretends she doesn't 'get it'
Read more