The Worst Time Kris Jenner Taught Me To Make Pumpkin Bread

by Gabrielle Noone

Kris Jenner is a 58-year-old mother of six who owns many sets of Hermes plates. I am a 20-year-old childless drifter who recently invested in some nice Ziploc bags. You know, the ones with the sliders? But after reading her cookbook, I’ve learned we’re not so different. We’re both obsessed with The Cheesecake Factory. We both grew up eating spaghetti out of a can. But, most importantly, we are both working our best to live fearlessly as ourselves every single day.

People rag on the Kardashians for being fake, but this manager, momager, lover of life, and lover of Christ proves them all wrong. In a world of GOOP and PRESERVE, where lifestyle gurus bend over backwards in attempts to seem effortless, Kris Jenner is the realest.

When I mentioned to my mom that I was reading In The Kitchen With Kris: A Kollection of Kardashian-Jenner Recipes (which I will simply refer to as “The Kookbook” from here on out), she asked “Do you really think she wrote it?” I heartily replied, “Oh, I am certain.” This is not some ghost-written impersonal cookbook that simply got stamped with a K-shaped seal of approval. This is Kris Jenner’s manifesto. “Some people paint, others make music and dance, I make table settings. That’s my way of expressing my artistic and creative side,” she writes.

The book begins with a section called “Kris’s Basics,” which, although it just sounds like an insulting way of referring to her daughters, is a collection of only two recipes. The first is “Robert Kardashian’s Cream of Wheat,” which she appetizingly introduces by explaining that when her ex-husband (not her son Rob, a.k.a. the elusive sock designer) had stage IV oesophageal cancer, he wouldn’t eat for weeks at a time. The only thing he could stomach was Cream of Wheat cereal specifically prepared by Kim. The majority of the instructions of the recipe are “Follow cooking instructions on box for two servings.”

Beyond her “basics,” Kris’s approach to cooking is so rich-person-from-a-1980s-movie I can’t help but read it with the same kind of bemused fondness that I feel when Troop Beverly Hills comes on cable. She refers to a truffled cauliflower mash as “the Neiman Marcus version of mashed potatoes.” It is everything I’d expect from a woman who self-produced a music video to commemorate her 30th birthday. She name-dropped Judith Leiber, Cheesecake Factory, Valentino, and Bible study.

“When the need to indulge hits,” she writes before introducing a recipe for spicy sweet potato fries, “some people go for comfort food (chicken and waffle sliders!), others go for something fancier (champagne and caviar). I love both. But I’m always on the lookout for figure friendly options.” Me too, Kris. Me too.

The Kookbook is also full of delightful tidbits which don’t technically qualify as gossip to most people, but struck me as gleaming nuggets of gold. For instance, we learn that the late Nicole Simpson-Brown, Kris’s best friend, was known for her chicken nachos that warranted a “cult following.” Kris describes the time she had dinner at Jennifer Lopez’s house and fell in love with her oven. Or how when she knew people were coming over for dinner, but she wouldn’t be home in time, she could always rely on calling a 12-year-old Khloe and ask her to “handle it.” Or how, when pregnant with Kourtney, she used to lock herself up in the pantry and eat boxes of Vienna fingers. She explains that she has recently become obsessed with a “Magic Cookie” bar recipe in the same way and then adds a cryptic “hmm,” which did make me wonder: is Kris trying to reveal that she’s with child?

I decided to try making “Kim’s Pumpkin Bread” because it was the most accessible. By that I mean it didn’t require truffle oil or three different types of cheese (remember: 20-year-old drifter). It does however require 3 cups of sugar, which feels fitting considering Kim’s well-documented obsession with sweets. Apparently, Kim doesn’t even make this bread, but she brought it home from an 8th-grade holiday recipe swap. The process of making this pumpkin bread instilled more drama into my life than I have encountered in years.

First of all, the recipe creates an enormous amount of batter that is surely too much for the standard loaf pan the recipe requires. I filled the pan to the top and had enough batter leftover to make 6 pumpkin donut shaped muffins.

After the recommended 55 minutes of cooking time, my bread was still raw in the center. I left it in another 10 minutes; it began to get too dark on the outside, but remained batter-y on the inside. “I literally just cannot talk to you right now,” I said to my roommate as she interrupted me while I stuck a knife into the bread for the third time.

Now, here is the real genius of Kris Jenner: what she has written is not so much a cookbook as it is a guide to performance art. While, yes, there is a chance this recipe was not tested before publication, I refuse to believe Kris would betray my trust that way.I thought I was just making “Kim’s Pumpkin Bread.” What I was really creating was my own controlled Keeping Up With Kardashians situation of stress-inducing-but-non-life-threatening drama.

After about 75 minutes in the oven, the outer edges of the bread began to burn. I made a decision that I would describe as “seriously, so crazy” if I were giving an interview bite on KUWTK and decided to cut the top of the bread off, exposing its raw center. The bread finally finished baking, mostly, and I elegantly wrapped it in some wax paper to bring to a party. My friends said it was pretty good, but I didn’t care because in the words of Kris, “It’s more than food. It’s tradition. It’s legacy. It’s love.”

“How f*cking dare you. You’re such an evil bitch. How spiteful and jealous… How f*cking dare you. You’ve crossed a major line with me. That shit is not okay, you dumb, evil little f*cking troll. You have no idea how much I hate you. You’re disgusting.”
 — Kim Kardashian to Khloe Kardashian. Also me to this pumpkin bread.

Gabby Noone is a writer and student majoring in The Cheesecake Factory menu. She lives in New York.