Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread

I have mentioned my love of pumpkin before on this blog, and although I mostly associate it with fall, I really do like it any time of the year. We are having a family get-together tomorrow and since it is summer and I can't get rid of my baking projects at school like I usually do, I made these to take down with me tomorrow. The original recipe was here, but I made several significant changes.

Ingredients:
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup sugar (I used more like 7/8)
1/2 cup applesauce
1/4 cup oil
3 eggs
2 cups flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 cup dark chocolate chips

Directions:
Whisk the pumpkin puree, sugar, applesauce, and oil together in a bowl. Add the eggs in one at a time and mix well. Fold in the flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and nutmeg and then fold in the chocolate chips. Spray a 9x9 pan with olive oil and add the dough, then bake at 350 for 35 minutes.

I have tried this recipe before and it was an unmitigated disaster. It was a soggy mess and did not bake all the way through even after an hour in the oven, but this time worked better. Part of the issue was that the original recipe was written by someone in Singapore, and the only unit of measurement she used was grams. This seems like a simple enough fix until you realize that grams is a weight measurement and so 250 grams of flour and 250 grams of oil are not the same amount. After about an hour of research, I finally figured out something that I think is close enough. On top of the unit conversions, I used applesauce in place of 2/3 of the oil, added cinnamon and nutmeg (because you can't use pumpkin without those!!), and reduced the sugar. In addition, I baked it in a 9x9 pan instead of a loaf pan.

Rating: 4.5/5
Why? This comes together really fast, with just a bowl, a whisk, and a spatula. It is very good but I wish I could figure out how to further reduce the sugar.