Eek!  It’s been almost a month since my last post! That is way too long! I promise I will fill you in on the exciting adventures I had in Hong Kong soon! It’s going to be an exciting post co-written with my travel buddy, and a lot of pictures. But in the meantime, I thought I’d share something quick with you. A quickie quick bread mix I found during a shopping trip through Williams-Sonoma:

Sometimes things just don’t work out.  Take this weekend for example.  Plans were made, then an October snowstorm kind of put those plans to the test.  Ultimately everything got canceled and for the first weekend in many many moons, I hung out at home all weekend with nothing planned and nothing in my fridge.

What does a girl do to pass some time?  Bake of course.  With the oven on, it will at least warm up the place without having to turn up the heat right?

Except….I was running low on baking supplies.  Just my luck, before the storm, I made an unplanned shopping trip out to the Palisades, where I happened upon Williams-Sonoma who happen to have a 15% off Pantry sale, and who happen to have samples of Ooey-Gooey Pumpkin Bars out, along with a recipe card.  I bought the set which included the Spiced Pecan Pumpkin Quickbread mix and the Pumpkin Pecan Butter.  (After further reading, the recipe for the bars called for a ridiculously large amount of butter and sugar, so there goes that experiment!)

I haven’t made stuff out of a box since I started baking from scratch as a hobby.  But right here, right now, snow bound and looking for something to bake with limited supplies, this mix was the answer.  All I needed was my last stick of butter, two eggs and a cup of water.  Done and done.  Except of course I had to make some additions right?

It called for a stick of melted butter.  I browned a stick of butter and used some of it to grease my loaf pan.

I also added a couple of handfuls of oats into the mix and a little on top.

I mixed and poured into the pan and popped it into the oven for about an hour.

Oopps! Mistakes happen...at least it was just the bottom!

Once it finished, I took some leftover cream cheese my brother and father had gotten at the bagel store for their bagels, and put it in a bowl.  I didn’t have any butter left, nor did I want to make a frosting.  So to the cream cheese I added a couple of generous spoonfuls of the Pumpkin Pecan Butter and mixed until the butter was incorporated and the mixture was light.  Pumpkin cream cheese, I guess.

Together, it was good.  The bread itself was too sweet for my taste.  That’s one of my issues with pre made mixes, you can’t adjust the sugar or other ingredients to taste.  But, it was easy, and the finished product was good.  I’d recommend it for when you need something in a pinch, but have an hour to bake it.

The addition of the oats gave it a nice texture, perhaps I would add more next time.

The pumpkin cream cheese was good.  Light, not too sweet and deliciously creamy like a whipped cream cheese.  It goes great on anything really.

A quickie quick bread for those lazy Sundays…