I’m participating in this fall jars series with these fabulous bloggers and every project they have posted has been lovely. I so wanted to have equally lovely content to share with you this week, and I think, for the most part, I’ve been doing okay. As of Wednesday, I still didn’t have a post ready for the last day of the series, so I needed to get to work on my mason jar pumpkin bread recipe. I had an idea of how it would work in my head, but things didn’t go quite the way I had planned.

I found a few different mason jar pumpkin bread recipes online, and I got to work adapting them to create my own version. I took a little from one recipe, a little from another, added in a bit of my own spin, and ended up with a version that looked (and smelled) delicious.

Of all the recipes I perused, they all had two things in common. I was supposed to bake the bread in 325 degree oven, and I should divide the bread batter into eight 1-pint jars. I got out my jar funnel and got to work.

As I was filling the jars, I thought to myself, “Self, these jars seem pretty full. I am probably overfilling them.” But I was dividing the batter equally like the recipes said, so I figured it would be fine. I even divided the batter in NINE jars just to be safe. I placed the jars in a 9×13 and put them in the oven to bake.

And when I took the jars out, they looked like this:

And sometimes your recipes taste really good but they look like this. #pumpkinbreadfail

A photo posted by Jessica (@madincrafts) on Aug 31, 2016 at 10:35am PDT

My name is Jess and math is not my strong suit. I was using half-pint jars, as anyone who has ever canned has probably already recognized. If I had either halved the recipe or used 16 half pint jars, and this recipe would have turned out perfectly.

The bread tasted wonderful, but looked like garbage. I was pretty disappointed in myself for making such a stupid mistake and I was not looking forward to baking another batch just to photograph it for the blog. Thankfully I have brilliant people who follow me on Instagram, and user kkuss suggested camouflaging the mess with frosting. Genius.

I didn’t have the ingredients for cream cheese frosting on hand, but I did have the makings of some tasty whipped pumpkin butter. I piped a bit on top of the mangled mason jar breads, and I think they look pretty darn appetizing. When you are having a bad hair day, put on a hat. When you’re having a bad bread day, put butter all over it. It’s science.

Mason Jar Pumpkin Bread

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Adapted from: http://www.food.com/recipe/pumpkin-bread-in-jar-124004 http://www.cooks.com/recipe/m46sl7op/pumpkin-bread-in-a-jar.html http://allrecipes.com/recipe/245014/joseys-pumpkin-spice-bread-in-a-jar/

Ingredients

Bread

2 1/2 c. sugar
1 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. butter softened
1- 15 oz. can pure pumpkin
2 eggs
1/2 c. applesauce
3 1/2 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
2/3 c. chopped pecans

Butter

1/2 c. butter
1 T. honey
1/2 T. cinnamon
splash of milk
Whisk all ingredients together until fluffy. Refrigerate until serving.

Instructions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray 16 half pint jars or 8 pint jars with cooking spray.
In a large bowl, cream sugar and butter together.
Add pumpkin, eggs, and applesauce. Mix to combine
In a separate bowl, whisk dry ingredients together.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet, stir until combined.
Add pecans and stir.
Divide the batter equally among the mason jars.
Place the mason jars on a baking sheet and bake for 45-55 minutes.
Let the jars thoroughly cool before handling.
Top with butter before serving.

If you would like to see what the other bloggers in this series have cooked up for the last day, click on the links below:

Pumpkin Spice Creamer – The Cottage Market

Fall Mason Jar Coloring Page – The Country Chic Cottage

Drunken Spice Latte – The Shabby Creek Cottage

Mason Jar Mummy – Yesterday on Tuesday