Pumpkin Bread Stuffed with Cookie Dough

Pumpkin bread with cookie dough

Around this time of year, pumpkin begins a period of proliferation that lasts until Thanksgiving. The cooler weather is good for gourd-eating, as pumpkin lends a cozy heartiness to baked goods of all types, including one of my personal favorites, pumpkin bread.

While pumpkin bread is wonderful in its simplicity, it is possible to heighten your seasonal eating by adding a healthy helping of chocolate chip cookie dough to the batter. It gives the bread a decadently gooey center, and the spiciness of the pumpkin bread works beautifully with the brown sugar and chocolate in the cookies. Feel like gilding the lily? Go ahead, serve it with ice cream.

This post also showed up on Serious Eats!

Pumpkin Bread Stuffed with Cookie Dough

  • 1 (15-ounce) can pumpkin puree
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 cup (about 8 ounces) vegetable oil
  • 2/3 cup (about 5 1/4 ounces) water
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 2 1/4 cups (about 15 3/4 ounces) sugar
  • 3 1/2 cups (about 17 1/2 ounces) flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
  • 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 12 ounces chocolate chip cookie dough

Procedure

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour either a large bundt pan or two 8 1/2- by 4- by 2 1/2-inch loaf pans.  
  2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or in a large bowl with an electric mixer, combine the pumpkin, eggs, oil, water, vanilla and sugar until well blended. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves until well combined.  
  3. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Spoon 3/4 of the batter into the pan.
  4. Roll the cookie dough into a long log. Place it along the center of the pan so that it forms an "inner" tube. Cover with the remaining batter so that dough is completely submerged. If using two loaf pans, simply make two "logs" of dough and insert them as a straight line in either pan.  
  5. Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 55 to 65 minutes.  
  6. Let cake cool in the pan(s) for 1 hour before turning out on to a serving platter.