JERRY CITY — Tony Borton may not be a chef extraordinaire, but he knows how to make a darn good pumpkin
bread.
Make that Pumpkin Cream Cheese Bread — a creamy smooth, no-holds-barred pumpkin bread.
Even his staff at Elmwood Local Schools, where he is superintendent, agreed that the recipe is a keeper.

“They were excellent,” said Kelli Reiser, treasurer’s secretary in the office, about the muffins Borton
brought in along with the bread. “I didn’t realize he baked, and the frosting really added it to it.”

If a goal for the new year is losing weight, don’t make this bread every week. The bread/muffins contain
butter, cream cheese and sugar. The frosting is a decadent blend of cream cheese, butter and powdered
sugar.
The bread alone is amazing but add the frosting and it is heavenly.
The frosting is not for everyone.
“It’s very good,” said Kim Bloom, Borton’s secretary. “A little sweet for me but it was good.”
Borton knows his way around a kitchen, to a certain extent.
“I don’t mind baking but I’m not a cook,” he said. “I’ve always preferred baking cookies and breads. I
think it’s because it’s sweet.”
He leaves the cooking to wife Kelley.
Borton said he has to be in the mood to bake.
“I always get recipes that look really good, then just sit there,” he said. “I can go and not bake for a
month, then make three loaves of banana bread.”
He’s partial to banana bread. But there’s something about the pumpkin recipe that makes it more popular.

“We love recipes with pumpkin — pumpkin pie is my favorite. But this recipe gets made year-round.”
He got the pumpkin bread recipe from long-time friends who also have a cabin on Hamilton Lake in Indiana.
The Borton family has been traveling to the cabin for 15 years.
But the friends didn’t do any frosting on the bread. Borton came up with his icing recipe by copying a
cream cheese frosting served on cookies at a Napoleon store.
He and Kelley came up with the recipe for the frosting.
“We keep it separate so you can add it or not,” he said of the frosting and the bread. “It’s just one of
those good great flavors.”
Whenever he is going somewhere and is taking dessert, this is what the family members will pick, he said.

He learned to bake from his mom, who was a good cook and baker.
“When she’d bake, I’d always join her in the kitchen. Maybe that’s where the baking love came from.”
As the youngest of seven children, Borton said his five brothers and one sister all loved to be in the
kitchen.
He has one son and two daughters, all out of the house. They all will cook, learning from their mom.
His other go-to recipes are for cookies, particularly chocolate chip and snickerdoodles.
“I don’t do pies. I love pies,” Borton said, adding that he’s intimidated by trying to make a homemade
crust.
Borton has been at Elmwood nine years, coming from Napoleon where he was principal at the middle school.

He started job hunting “and this is where life took me.”
He hopes to finish his career at Elmwood in around 10 years.
“It’s a great community. I love the small rural feel.”