Pumpkin Gingerbread: An Equinoctial Enthusiast's Dream

Autumn is my favourite season by miles. And yes, I refuse to call it 'fall', because autumn is a much cooler and more elaborate word. My birthday is in autumn, everything turns orange, and I'm only sweating 97 per cent of the time. But in the context of food, autumn is a great time of year. This is for many reasons: soups and casseroles make their comeback, hearty, stodgy foods return to the scene, and the heat-induced era of salad supremacy draws to a close. On top of that, pumpkin starts being a thing. Especially here in the United States, you find that everything you could ever eat or drink ends up laced with pumpkin: pumpkin beer, pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin pie. I happened upon pumpkin bread last year, sort of by mistake. While procrasta-baking, I realised I had a can of pumpkin purée and I decided to just chuck it in, with a few different spices, and - lo and behold - I had created a miracle in my oven: pumpkin gingerbread.

Under construction, the bread is merely some orange goo

70 minutes later, you have an equinoctial enthusiast's dream! 

Recipe makes 1 loaf of bread, in a 9x5 loaf tin. Serves one company of people celebrating the equinox.

Ingredients:
1 ½ cup of sugar
½ cup of canola oil
2 eggs
½ teaspoon maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
15oz tin pumpkin purée
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 3/4 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder

Method:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit/175 degrees Celsius. Lightly grease a 9x5 loaf tin, with butter/margarine/canola oil.
In a large mixing bowl, combine all dry ingredients except sugar.
In a separate bowl, mix eggs and add all other wet ingredients. Mix well with a whisk or wooden spoon. Add sugar and mix again.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients mix well, until blended. Make sure there are no/only minimal lumps in the mixture.
Pour into the loaf tin and bake for about 70 minutes, or until the loaf turns from orange to brown, and a fork comes out clean (after you having stuck a fork in it, do not expect a fork to emerge from your bread).
Serve to a gaggle of hungry folk, and go wander smugly in the foliage - autumn is here!!