Pumpkin and cream cheese bread

I've mentioned before that I LOVE all things pumpkin, except pumpkin pie. This Bread is SO yummy. It is a combination of a Layered Pumpkin Loaf at Kraftfoods.com and Emmy's Pumpkin Bread recipe from kingarthurflour.com. I used the cream cheese mixture from the kraft foods recipe and the bread from King Arthurs. I did add 2 t. of cinnamon to the King Arthur recipe as suggested by the girls at Little Birdie Secrets.

Pumpkin and Cream Cheese Bread

Ingredients:

• 1 8 oz. package or cream cheese
• 1 egg white
• 2 T sugar
• 2/3 cup shortening or 1 cup vegetable oil (I used shortening)
• 2 2/3 cups sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 2 cups (or 1 15 oz can) pumpkin
• 2/3 cup water
• 3 1/3 cups flour
• 1/2 t baking powder
• 2 t baking soda
• 1 1/2 t salt
• 1 t nutmeg
• 2 t cinnamon
• 1 t vanilla
  

Directions: Cream together cream cheese, egg white and 2 T sugar and set aside. In a large bowl, cream together the shortening or oil and the sugar. Beat in the eggs, pumpkin and water. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla, stirring to blend.

Spoon batter into the bottom portion of a greased bread pan, add a layer of cream cheese filling(this is hard to smooth evenly, I just dropped a couple of spoonfuls per pan), add more batter on top of the cream cheese. Bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for ~1 hour or until you can insert a toothpick and it comes out clean.

This will make 2 9x5-inch loaves or I made 7 little mini-loaves and 10 muffins. Make sure you only fill your bread pan to ~2/3 full. The first time I made this I used some little Christmas tree molds and they overflowed!! It only took about 50 minutes for the mini loaves.