For the third week of GBBO, aka bread week, I’m brining you a fluffy pumpkin loaf with honey, raisins, spices and a delicious creamy coffee drizzle. This might just be my favourite icing recipe that I’ve created to date.. and it’s gluten, dairy & refined sugar free! It’s super creamy from the combination of coconut cream and cashew butter; with rich coffee undertones and a beautiful fragrant sweetness from the honey. Honey is actually the main sweetener used in the cake and is something that I’m just loving at the moment. I love the array of different flavour honeys you can get and their sticky texture is also great for baking and making sweet treats.
As for the bread itself, you might have noticed the pumpkins making their way onto the supermarket shelves.. and I intend to take full advantage of this! Luckily, my local Wholefoods also stocks pumpkin puree, which is actually pretty difficult to get your hands on here in the UK. I’m not sure whether they sell it all year round, so incase they don’t, I plan on really going to town with the pumpkin themed recipes for the next couple of months. It’s actually such a versatile ingredient and I san excellent addition to baked goods. You can use it in a similar way that you would sweet potatoes and they help to add moisture into cakes and here I’ve used it in place of coconut oil or vegan butter. It’s also really mild in flavour, so doesn’t affect the taste of the cake.. in fact, I reckon if someone didn’t know it was in there, I think they would have a pretty tough time guessing! Pumpkin is also pretty low in calories, so using this in place of oil could be handy if you’re looking to make more macro friendly sweet treats and desserts. I also like the idea of adding something a little different and unusual into my sweet recipes.. and veggies aren’t usually your typical cake ingredient.
I love creating seasonal recipes and find so much inspiration in the change of seasons. I’m actually incredibly excited about the upcoming few months as Autumn and Christmas recipes are some of my favourite things to make and I have lots of scrumptious ideas in the pipeline! Other than pumpkin, something else that you’re going to be seeing an awful lot of on the blog are lots of warming wintery spices. I adore the flavours of pumpkin and gingerbread spice mixes and you can add them into a whole host of dishes like porridges, smoothie, biscuits, cakes and loaf cakes like this one! You could enjoy this with an afternoon cup of tea, desk snack at the office or perhaps a slightly more indulgent sweet breakfast dish topped with some creamy almond or peanut butter.
