I just love fall and all the baking that comes along with it! Pumpkin everything, cinnamon, apples… my favorite season and my favorite flavors.
One treat that my girls and I just love is the pumpkin bread from Starbucks. We look for it every fall without fail. Super moist, rich pumpkin flavor- just the right blend of nutmeg and cinnamon and ginger.
I have tried many pumpkin bread recipes but none seem to come close to the Starbucks bread. So many pumpkin bread recipes can be dry or lacking in flavor. This recipe comes very, very close and is so quick and easy to make. You can whip this up all fall and winter and it makes a perfect gift.
I made loaf after loaf after loaf of pumpkin bread for a few weeks trying to get the recipe just right and this one I am super happy with and I hope you enjoy it too.
Ready to try my Copycat Starbucks Pumpkin Bread? Here we go:
- 2 Cups Flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice*
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ginger
- 1 egg
- ¾ cup sugar
- ¾ cup brown sugar
- ½ cup canola or vegetable oil
- ¼ cup milk
- ¾ cup pumpkin puree
- Optional topping:
- Sunflower seeds and pepitas
- chocolate chips
- Heat oven to 325 degrees.
- Mix spices, flour, salt and baking soda in a bowl and set aside
- Add sugar, oil and egg to a stand mixture and mix until incorporated.
- Slowly add dry ingredients and continue to mix until the batter is smooth.
- Add pumpkin puree and milk until incorporated and batter is smooth like a very thick pancake batter.
- Fold in chocolate chips if desired and pour into a well greased loaf pan
- Sprinkle pepitas and sunflower seeds on top of the mixture and bake at 325 for approximately 70 minutes.
A few notes about this recipe:
This makes a generous size loaf- my loaf pan is 10.8″ x 5.3″ x 3.5″. You can easily turn this into 2 smaller loaves, 3 mini loaves or muffins.
I added quite a bit of spices- I find that Starbucks is fairly heavy handed with spice so don’t skimp. The ginger in particular adds a lot of flavor (I don’t like the flavor of ginger as a general rule but always add it to pumpkin bread.) *You can find a recipe to make your own pumpkin pie spice below if you don’t have any on hand.
Oven times vary tremendously so I do suggest putting the rack in the middle of your oven and testing your bread starting at 60 minutes or so to see exactly how long it takes for you. Mine seems to be about 70 minutes for the loaf to be cooked through in the middle.
Starbucks adds a mixture of pepitas and other seeds to the top of the bread. This is totally optional but I added pepitas (I found them in the trail mix section at Target but bulk bins are a better option at grocery stores) and unsalted sunflower seeds to my food processor to chop them up just a bit and sprinkled that on top. You only need about a teaspoon of each to sprinkle on top.
Last but not least, I LOVE pumpkin bread with chocolate chips. So, so good! You can definitely add them to this recipe as is and it would be amazing. I tend to reduce the sugar a bit when I do add chocolate.
Also the very best way to serve this is straight from the oven with a generous dallop of butter. I love Kerrygold Butter (not sponsored) on top! Perfect!
If you give this recipe a shot please come back and let me know what you think!
Here are a few other recipes you might enjoy:
Copycat Starbucks Banana Bread (this is the most popular recipe on my blog)
hi! I see there is an asterisk on one of the items in the recipe so I wasn’t sure what it was for, can you explain that?
Hi Karen- yup! I noted in the post that you can make your own spice if you don’t have any on hand.
*You can find a recipe to make your own pumpkin pie spice below if you don’t have any on hand.
Hope you like it!
Hi, Charlene! I’m not a coffee drinker but love Starbucks pumpkin & banana bread. I was so excited to find your recipe! I tried it today and it was sooo good! Thank you so much! I used chocolate chips in mine also. 🙂
Oh so glad Lynne! Thanks so much for taking the time to comment. I am firmly in the chocolate chip camp too 😉 YOLO right?
I made this today and as I add the dry ingredients to the wet ones it felt off, not sure where I went wrong but the batter was very thick. Then it came out a little dry and crumbly. I want to try this again, wondering if this happened to anyone else and if anyone has any tips. (I baked it in a gas oven and mixed by hand not a stand mixer just for reference). It tasted delicious just crumbly. Thanks 🙂
Oh no 🙁 Sorry you had that experience. I’m not sure what would have gone wrong.