Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Bread

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter your containers well.

Sift the dry ingredients together into a large bowl. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, and add the eggs, oil, pumpkin and water. Beat thoroughly. It's easier to get all the lumps out if you use an electric mixer. Stir in the walnuts with a wooden spoon.

Pour the batter into the containers, filling each only half to two-thirds full. Bake for 60-90 minutes, depending on the sizes of your containers. If you're using a very small container, start checking much sooner. The bread is done when a toothpick in the middle comes out clean.

Cool about ten minutes, then loosen the edges of the bread with a knife, and turn out of the pans to cool the rest of the way on a rack. For baking containers, you can use a loaf pan, metal cans, or whatever. I usually use 1-pound coffee cans, and it takes three of them. If you want tiny loaves, you could probably use soup cans.

NOTES:

* A dessert bread made from pumpkins — Every year in Half Moon Bay, California there is a Pumpkin Festival, at which prizes are given for the largest pumpkin in the world. Never mind that for the last two years the winner has been in Nova Scotia: the citizens of Half Moon Bay take pumpkins very seriously.

At Christmas time in Half Moon Bay, people give each other little tins of this bread as presents. I also take it backpacking, because it's pretty resistant to being squashed (and tastes fine even when it is). Yield: 3 1-pound loaves.

* I think the nuts are important in this recipe. Unless you absolutely hate them, leave them in.

* It's not necessary, but you can serve some good cream cheese with it to spread on the slices if you like.

: Difficulty: easy to moderate. : Time: 15 minutes preparation, 90 minutes cooking. : Precision: measure the ingredients.

: Vicki O'Day : Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, California, USA : hplabs!oday

Your Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Bread is ready. Good luck!