Recipe for success: Pumpkin bread with cream cheese ribbon

Have I got a real treat in store for you today. This, my friends, is the recipe for an easy and very tasty pumpkin bread. Too boring, you say? Not this one. It has a ribbon of a cream cheese filling that really is icing on the cake, if you want to stick with baking clichés. Bake up a batch, stick it in the fridge and watch as you uncontrollably eat it for the next 23 hours - you won't even make it 24 hours. (Okay, so I accidentally typed 23 instead of 24 and then got dramatic).

1. Assemble the ingredients:
   
   

   For the bread • 1 cup pumpkin filling • ½ cup vegetable oil • 2 eggs • 1 ½ cup sugar • ½ teaspoon salt • ½ teaspoon cloves • ½ teaspoon cinnamon • 1 2/3 cups flour • 1 teaspoon baking soda

   For the filling • 1 package cream cheese (large), softened • 1/3 cup sugar • 1 Tablespoon flour • 1 egg • 2 teaspoons grated orange peel (optional)

2. Preheat oven to 325° F.
   
3. Grease and flour your bread pans. The recipe calls for two 7 1/2 x 3 1/3 loaf pans - but I do a medley of pans and fill until I run out of batter.
   
4. For the filling, beat cream cheese, sugar and flour together in a small bowl. Add egg, mix to blend. Stir in orange peel, set aside.


5. Make bread by combining pumpkin, oil and eggs in a large bowl. Add sugar, salt, cloves, cinnamon, flour, baking soda, mix to blend.


6. Pour ¼ of the batter into your greased and floured pans. Carefully spread the cream cheese mixture over the batter. Add remaining batter, covering the filling.
   
7. Bake at 325° F for 1 ½ hours, or until bread tests done with wooden pick. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans.
   
8. Store in refrigerator.

NOTES: I keep meaning to double the filling part of the recipe to get a nice, big ribbon of cream cheese, but have never done it. Something to try out if you want to flex your culinary muscles or if adding fractions together is really your thing.