Figure Friendly Pumpkin Bread

Well, Pumpkin Palooza comes to an end today. I hope you have enjoyed all the pumpkin goodness this week.

As I was deciding what recipe to share today, my mother’s voice kept echoing in my head saying, “You have to make this Pumpkin Bread recipe! It is so good and would be great for the blog!” She mentioned this bread several times in the past couple of weeks and even served it at my sister’s baby shower last weekend so I thought I would be a good daughter and listen to my mother.

The original recipe can be seen at www.cooks.com. The recipe looks amazing and I totally trust my mom that it tastes awesome too, but the recipe includes lots of oil and sugar so I thought I would tweak it and create a lighter version. Instead of adding 1 cup of oil, I substituted 1 cup of unsweetened applesauce and for the 3 cups of sugar, substituted 2 1/2 cups honey. Using honey in place of sugar will make the batter wetter so you can add an extra 1/4 cup flour. I am not sure if it is necessary, but I added the extra flour and the bread turned out wonderful. I also substituted unbleached flour for all-purpose flour. After baking the bread, I lightly drizzled the top of the loaves with pure maple syrup. This added a touch of sweetness and made the bread glisten. All these adjustments are included in the figure friendly version at the end of the post.

The original recipe contains 210 calories and 8.2 grams of fat per serving and the figure friendly version contains 160 calories and 2.2 grams of fat per serving. I am sure you can do the math, but the lighter version saves you 50 calories and 6 grams of fat per serving. This recipe can be lightened further by leaving out the nuts making it 144 calories and .7 grams of fat per serving. So with a little tweaking many recipes can be lightened without sacrificing flavor or your waist line.

Buon Appetito!