Pumpkin Bread Failure

My mom's pumpkin bread has achieved as near to legendary status as is possible for non immortal baked goods. It was a staple growing up for breakfasts, snacks, lunch boxes, everything. It arrived on a regular basis in my college care packages, sustaining me through many papers, problem sets and exams.

Sadly, my mom's pumpkin bread is something I can no longer eat. So I wanted to reverse engineer one I could. It shouldn't be too hard right? I got muffins down on basically my first try, surely I could make pumpkin bread.

It started off well enough. Using my mom's recipe as a guide, I tried to make substitutions and adjustments based off of what I knew from making muffins. More liquid and leavening. Long rest to allow the flour to soak up the liquid. Extra eggs for stability.  It smelled right. It was the right color, and after resting in the fridge for a couple of hours it was the right consistency. It even looked ok while it was baking. I pulled it out when a skewer came out clean.

But it was a failure. It fell apart when I took it out of the pan. As it cooled, it wasn't cakey. It was mushy. Almost slimey. it was as though I had created some horrible hybrid of cake and pudding and unlike plum pudding or bread pudding, it was disgusting (it didn't help that I scaled back the sweetening a little too aggressively).

The sweetness thing is easy enough to correct. But I'm not sure what to do with this slime. The cake was done. It was as set as could be, but it was slimey. I think I may have to start from scratch, and keep only my mom's spice ratios.

Sometimes, experimental baking is very disappointing.