Oh look, another recipe with cinnamon! I hope you guys like it as much as I do because this certainly won’t be the last one for a while… This brown butter pumpkin loaf is a proper, hearty sponge topped with rich, decadent maple frosting. Yum!
If you’ve never tried anything made with brown butter, you’re missing out. It lends a wonderfully rich, nutty flavour to any dish. The combination of brown butter + pumpkin + maple frosting is one I’m pretty impressed with.
Let’s talk about the maple frosting. Can we all agree it sounds incredible (hint: it is!). One of the obstacles with this is that maple syrup is so runny. A lot of recipes have you add cream cheese to firm it up but when it come to frosting, I’m team buttercream all the way! The trick here is to thicken it first by gently heating in a pan. This allows you to add enough syrup to get a pure maple hit without having to add any extra ingredients. It might sound like a bit of faff but trust me, it is oh so worth it!
Ingredients
- 200g butter
- 100g light brown sugar
- 125g dark brown sugar
- 400g pumpkin puree
- 2 medium eggs
- 325g plain flour
- 1/2 tbsp baking powder
- 1 tbsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tbs ginger
- 1/2 tsp ground cloves
- 150ml maple syrup
- 250g butter, softened
- 75g icing sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 170c. Melt the butter over a medium heat until it has stopped foaming and turned brown with a nutty smell. Add to a bowl with the sugar and pumpkin and mix well. Beat the eggs and add to the mixture.
- In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and spices. Ad to the dry ingredients to the wet and gently fold to combine. Pour into a greased or lined 2lb loaf tin and bake for 45 minutes.
- Over a low heat, gently thicken the maple syrup for about 10 minutes. Remove and allow to cool.
- Beat the butter until soft and creamy, then beat in the icing sugar. Add the thickened maple syrup and beat to combine. Allow the loaf to cool completely before frosting.