Recipes to Boost Focus in Meetings: Pumpkin Cream Cheese Bread #RBFM

By Fausto Mendez

    Pitching to a hungry audience is shooting yourself in the foot, so bring along some tasty treats – preferably sugary stuff – to boost everyone’s focus and mood. It WILL make a significant difference in the success or productivity of your meeting or pitch. This week’s #RBFM sugar spell: Pumpkin Cream Cheese Bread!

    Our favorite #RBFM recipes deliciously mash up two separate concepts, such as cinnamon rolls and cheesecake. That’s because, in a business setting, you definitely want to impress your meeting’s attendees. It makes your meeting that much more memorable. They will always remember that meeting as “the one where I tried a cinnamon-roll cheesecake for the first time.” If you’re making an important pitch, the incoming sugar high could be the difference between a success or a failure. 

   Anyway, let’s bake something. You can thank Recipes Quick’n Easy for original recipe. 

Step 0 – Gather your Ingredients

+ Filling: eight ounce pack of cream cheese, ½ to ¾ cup of sugar, one tablespoon of flour,one egg, ½ teaspoon vanilla extract.

+ Bread: 1 2/3 cups flour, one teaspoon baking soda, ½ teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon, ½ teaspoon ground cloves, ¼ teaspoon ginger, ¼ teaspoon nutmeg, one cup pumpkin puree, ½ cup canola oil, two large eggs, 1 ½ cups sugar, one cup chopped pecans or walnuts. 

+ Glaze: one cup powdered sugar, two tablespoons half & half, one teaspoon cinnamon, ½ cup chopped pecans or walnuts. 

Step 1 – Mix & Preheat

+ Preheat Oven to 325 degrees. 

+ Grease and flour two 8" x 4" x 3" loaf pans.

+ Start the filling. In a bowl, mix: cream cheese, sugar, flour, egg and vanilla. Mix until it feels pretty smooth, and aim for a “cream” texture. 

+ Start the bread. In a larger bowl, mix 1 2/3 cups flour, baking soda, salt cinnamon  cloves, ginger and nutmeg. In a separate bowl, mix: pumpkin puree, canola oil, eggs and sugar. Now, mix the contents of these two bowls together. Drop in your nuts for good measure. 

+ Step 2 – Prepare for the Bake

+ Empty half the pumpkin batter into the two loaf pans. Layer on the cream cheese, followed by the rest of the pumpkin batter.

+ Create a marble effect with the cream cheese by swirling a knife in the batter. The goal is not to mix the cream cheese into the batter; instead, the cheese should remain separate from the batter. 

+ Step 3 – Let’s Get Baked!

+ Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, or until you can stick a toothpick into your bread and pull it out clean. 

+ While we wait for that to finish, let’s make the cinnamon glaze. Take all the ingredients for the cinnamon glaze and mix them together. Add more cinnamon to darken the glaze. 

+ Pull out your bread. Let it cool for ten minutes or so. Now, drop some glaze on that B, and drop in your nuts for good measure.

Step 4 – Assimilate

+ First, I should warn you that fireworks may shoot out of your mouth during consumption, so keep a fire extinguisher on hand. 

+ Once you have your extinguisher, grab some bread, and put it in your mouth. I guess you can save some for a friend or whatever, but I wouldn’t blame you for being selfish. Oh yeah, don’t forget to save some for your next meeting, or… never mind, you’ll probably have to cook another batch.

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