Dried Apple, Pear & Plum Breakfast Bread. I am always on the look out for a decent breakfast bread recipe, be it a loaf, a muffin, whatever. There is nothing I love more than a breakfast bread loaf!
A few months ago I had bought a bag of mixed dried fruits which contained plums, prunes, apples, pears, apricots, etc. It can sometimes be difficult to find these dried fruits all on their own, so a mix like this is the way to go, and it was perfect for making this delicious breakfast bread.
Prepare yourself to get very excited about this delicious bread, which is not only low in fat, but high in fiber and loaded with goodness.
The fact that there is no actually butter or other fat in this loaf, means that you don't have to feel guilty toasting it and spreading it with butter or cream cheese, or both!
The recipe I used is one I adapted from a cookbook I have by Bill Granger entitled Every Day. If you are not familiar with Bill, he is a chef from down under, and I just adore his recipes. I had quite a few of his books in the UK, which of course I could not bring with me.
I am slowly trying to replace my favorites of the books I had, and this was one of them. It is filled with lovely recipes that I knew I would use.
His original recipe used dried apples, cherries and almonds. I had the dried apples, but not the dried cherries. So I decided to use a few of the other fruits in my mix.
Dried pears (I adore pears), plums (I adore plums) and then the dried apples. Have you ever dried your own apples?
I used to dry them back in the day. They made great snacks for the children. I used to just peel and core them and cut them into slices. I then soaked them briefly in a bowl of salted water. This helped to prevent them from discolouring.
You could also use lemon juice.
I would then pat them dry and then string them up and hang them over the wood stove, where the air was nice and dry. They would be ready in a few days. You could of course speed this process up by doing it in a very slow oven.
You can dry green beans in much the same way. I think they are called "leather britches", but I am not certain.
When you want to use them you can just rinse the beans, and cook them in a pot with some water and a ham hock and onion. Delicious.
Dried apples can be made into pies and all sorts. Tasty bakes such as this bread recipe I am sharing today.
You start by soaking some good old fashioned oats in a bowl along with a quantity of milk. While that is soaking you can get on with the business of doing everything else you need to do for the recipe.
Sort and chop your fruit. I cut mine into a small dice. Toast your nuts. Pop them onto a baking sheet and toast them in your oven at about 375*F/190*C for 8 to 10 minutes. Toasted nuts always taste better.
You will need self rising flour for this recipe. I used white, but you can also use whole wheat if you really want to add nutrition and protein.
I make my own self rising flour here in Canada. For every cup of flour needed, add 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt. I make it 3 or 4 cups at a time and keep it in the cupboard in a tightly closed container.
You can do the same with whole meal flour. It never goes off because I always use it up. I don't recommend making it in larger quantities than that just in case.
You want to make a reasonable amount that you know you are going to use up before the baking powder goes off. (Check the expiration date on your baking powder and use it up before then.)
For this recipe, measure the self rising flour into a bowl along with the baking powder you need in addition and some salt. Whisk it all well together.
Then add the brown sugar. You might want to work this in with your fingertips, just to make sure any lumps in your brown sugar are rubbed out, and it is mixed evenly throughout.
Then you can stir in your toasted nuts and your dried fruits. You can use any dried fruit you want actually. Prunes and apricots would be a lovely combination as well.
By then your oats should be ready to you can go ahead and preheat the oven and butter your loaf tin. I used a 9 inch by 4 inch loaf tin. Butter it and then line it with baking paper, leaving an overhang to lift the baked loaf out of the tin with.
Beat an egg and some liquid honey into your oat mixture, making sure everything is well distributed and the honey well amalgamated. Then it is as simple as mixing the two together, the dry and the wet.
Just stir it well together. You don't want any dry patches or lumps. Scrape it into the baking pan, sprinkle some more nuts on top, and bake.
Bake until well risen, golden brown and those nuts on top are looking very scrumptious. Leave it in the pan for about 10 minutes, lift out and then cool completely.
Personally I like to let it sit overnight before I start cutting into it. I do that will all of my quick breads They cut much nicer if you do that.
This is beautiful cut into 1/2 inch slices and toasted in the toaster oven or under a grill just until it is lightly toasted on both sides.
The nuts get all toasty and nutty, the fruit warms up, the oats start to snap a bit. Toasty little golden brown slices.
Spread with cold butter and cream cheese. Both melting down into those toasty crevices imparting lovely flavors to the loaf.
Then you can add a drizzle of honey. Just a drizzle. Oh boy, but this is some good.
You can feel good about eating it because it is loaded with fruit and fiber and no fat but what you add to it yourself. As little or as much as you dare.
This makes for good eating any time of the day to be honest. Fruit-filled, oaty, moreish and delicious!
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Dried Apple, Pear & Plum Breakfast Bread
Yield: Makes one (9 by 4-inch) loaf
Prep time: 10 MinCook time: 50 Mininactive time: 29 MinTotal time: 1 H & 29 M
This is a lovely bread to toast for breakfast. Chock full of goodness and fat free you don't have to feel guilty spreading it with butter and cream cheese, perhaps with a drizzle of honey.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup (50g) old fashioned rolled oats
- 2 1/4 cups (300ml) milk
- 1 3/4 cups (240g) self rising flour ( see note below)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 1/4 cups (250g) diced dried fruits (I used apple, pears and plums)
- 1/3 cup, packed (75g) soft light brown sugar
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 3 TBS liquid honey
- 1 large free range egg, beaten
- 5 TBS roughly chopped toasted walnuts, divided
Instructions
- Put the oats into a bowl. Pour the milk over top and leave to soak for half an hour.
- Sift the flour into a bowl with the baking powder and salt. Stir in the brown sugar, breaking up any lumps with your fingers. Stir in the diced fruits, cinnamon and 3 tablespoons of the chopped and toasted nuts.
- Preheat the oven to 350*F/180*C/ gas mark 4. Butter your loaf tin and line with baking paper.
- Whisk the oat/milk mixture together with the egg and honey. Pour this over the dry mixture and combine thoroughly. It should all be evenly moistened with no dry bits. Pour into the prepared tin. Sprinkle the remaining chopped nuts on top.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 45 to 50 minutes, until well risen and golden brown. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean.
- Leave in the pan to cool for 10 minutes, then lift out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
- Serve cut into slices, toasted and spread with butter, cream cheese and a drizzle of honey if desired.
Notes:
You can easily make your own self rising flour. For every cup of flour, simply whisk in 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt. I often make this up 3 to 4 cups at a time and keep it in a container ready to use when I need it. Just give it a quick whisk and then use as desired.
I had some stale bread that needed using up today, along with some bananas that were ripening. I knew I could use two of the bananas up in another kind of bake, but I wanted to do something different with the one.
I am not a big bread eater most of the time. I only ever rarely eat it, and then it is always whole wheat, and usually as toast. I had bought this loaf of white bread when Eileen and Tim were here one day because they only eat white bread.
If I had a large freezer, I simply would have frozen it to use another time, but alas . . . I only have the top of my refrigerator freezer at this point in time. I have given the birds lots of my bread over the past few months.
Today I thought I could use at least some of this to make some sort of dessert and with the banana involved, a chocolate and banana bread pudding came to mind. And why not!
I wish you could have seen this when it first came out of the oven. The bread and custard had all souffled up and looked like a pretty flower.
All puffy and tall, golden brown. Buttery golden brown. Alas, what goes up usually comes down in a very short time so I was unable to get a photograph. You will just have to take my word for it!
It was indeed, extremely pretty. I love recipes like this one, where you can use up things you have in your house. I hate waste.
Bread puddings and the like are the perfect use for stale bread, as is French toast. A bread pudding is actually like a baked French toast in almost every way.
Or you could say French toast is fried bread pudding. Its all in how you look at it I guess!
Today I used Villagio Classic Italian White Bread. The slices were nice and thick. Brioche would also work very well. Mmmm . . . especially chocolate chip brioche, but I digress.
This is a bread and butter pudding, in that the slices of bread are buttered on one side before layering them in the dish. I cut them in half and used a glass pie dish, placing half of them in buttered side up, and sprinkled with cinnamon
They looked like a flower laying there in the pie dish. I covered the first layer of bread with sliced banana. Not too thin, each slice being about 1/3 of an inch thick. Then I sprinkled semi-sweet chocolate chips over top.
Bananas and chocolate go so well together. I wouldn't use milk chocolate here. It would be too sweet with the banana. Just my opinion.
I thought semi sweet would work much better. Trust me on this.
I placed the remaining half slices of bread over top of the banana and chocolate chips, again sprinkling them with ground cinnamon.
I placed them slightly askew from the bottom layer so that there were no real gaps right through to the bottom of the dish if that makes sense.
A rich custard then gets poured over top. This, too, is simple. Just beaten milk and cream, eggs and some brown sugar.
I used full fat milk. I mean there is cream, so what the heck. Why not use whole! Desserts are suppose to be a tad bit indulgent.
You want to whisk these together until the sugar melts completely into the liquid. You could add a touch of vanilla if you wanted to, or a bit of vanilla and lemon, but I did not.
Pour this over the bread, making sure that every slice gets some on it.
I then used the back of my wooden spoon to smush them down a tiny bit. Making sure each and every scrap of the bread was soaked or soaking.
Submerge it as well as you can, but don't compact it, if that makes sense. (And I hope that it does!)
I didn't bother putting any chocolate chips on top. I knew that the oven temperature would only burn them, or cause they to dry out too much. I don't like chocolate chips that are burnt and dried out.
I also don't think any other kind of chocolate chip would work as well as the semi sweet. You could chop up semi sweet chocolate or even dark chocolate, but make sure it is a good quality chocolate.
I sprinkled it with a final but of freshly grated nutmeg and then just left it sitting for half an hour so that a lot of the custard could be absorbed. Makes for a lovely soufflé like finish, in my opinion.
This is a pudding that loves to be served with lashings of something creamy. Vanilla ice cream. Pouring cream. Custard sauce.
I decided to serve it with lashings of cream. Yes, there is only me. Don't judge me, lol. I already judge myself.
This is pretty indulgent and difficult to resist. A once in a blue moon treat perhaps.
My problem is I have far too many of those. Blue moon treats that is, but at this stage of my life, I figure a bit of indulgence every now and than won't hurt.
Do you know what you can do with leftover bread and butter pudding? Pop it into the refrigerator and let it get really cold. Then cut it into slabs.
Fry the slabs in hot butter and then serve it hot, drizzled with maple syrup, with some berries scattered over top for breakfast. Just saying. Not that I am going to do that.
But a gal can dream can't she? Dreams cost nothing. Enjoy!
Banana Bread Pudding
Yield: 3
Prep time: 10 MinCook time: 40 Mininactive time: 30 MinTotal time: 1 H & 19 M
You can use Brioche bread for this delicious pudding or ordinary white bread. Delicious served warm with vanilla ice cream, pouring cream or custard sauce. Simply double the ingredients to serve six.
Ingredients
- Softened butter to butter the bread and grease the casserole dish
- 5 thick slices of bread, you can leave the crusts on
- 1 banana, peeled and sliced
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 4 TBS semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 3/4 cup (180ml) whole milk
- 1/3 cup (80ml) double cream
- 1 large free range egg, lightly beaten
- 2 TBS soft light brown sugar
- pinch of grated nutmeg
Instructions
- Butter all of your bread slices on one side and cut in half through the middle. Butter a 9 inch pie dish.
- Place half of the bread slices in the bottom of the dish, butter side up. Sprinkle with half of the cinnamon. Slice the banana over top and sprinkle with the chocolate chips. Top with the remaining slices of bread, butter side up, and sprinkle with the remainder of the cinnamon.
- Whisk together the milk, cream, egg and brown sugar until the sugar melts into the mixture and dissolves. Pour this evenly over the bread in the pan, making sure everything gets covered. Push the bread down into the milk mixture with the back of a wooden spoon if you need to.
- Sprinkle a bit of nutmeg on top and leave to sit for half an hour.
- Preheat the oven to 375*F/190*C/ gas mark 5.
- Bake the bread pudding in the preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes until risen, golden brown and the custard has set. (A knife inserted half way between the side and the center should come out clean.)
- Serve warm and spooned out into bowls.
One major weakness of mine is cake. Another one is lemon. Combine the two things and I fear I am totally a lost cause. Can. Not. Resist.
Especially when it is a cake that is as delicious as this Lemon Buttermilk Loaf Cake. With its full on lemon flavors and scrumptious lemon glaze topping, this cake spells winner with capital "W" "I" "N" "N" "E" "R!" Make no mistake about it!
I have never met a lemon cake I did not love and this one is no exception. It is a well known fact that buttermilk makes cakes that are wonderfully moist and rich.
There are a lot of lemon buttermilk cake recipes out there, but most are baked in a Bundt tin. This one differs in that it is baked in a loaf pan, and it makes one loaf, not two, or three, etc. Just one incredibly moist and lemony cake.
One 8 by 4 inch loaf. Enough to serve 4 really hungry people, or two hungry people with leftovers, or 8 peckish people. It all depends on if you are peckish, hungry, or you just adore lemon cake.
If you are here, I gather you are at least one of those. But I am pretty sure you at least love lemon cake.
If you have lemons, butter, buttermilk, sugar, eggs, flour and a few odds and sundries like vanilla, baking powder and baking soda, then you already have the makings of this lush, moist and delicious cake!
I used to belong to a baking group, called Tuesdays with Dorie. In that group we used to bake one recipe a week, together as a group from Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking with Dorie. Sadly I had to leave all of my Dorie Greenspan books back in the UK last autumn.
I actually learned a lot from baking her recipes however. One thing was that to get a real depth of lemon flavor into baked goods, it helps to rub the lemon zest into the sugar.
Just measure out your sugar, add your freshly grated zest and start rubbing. Before you know it your nose and your kitchen will be filled with the lovely fragrance of lemon, and your bake will be filled with abundant lemon flavours.
This single act helps to release all of the natural oils in the lemon skins/zest and imparts a lovely flavor to the cake. I have done it ever since I learned it from Dorie and have never regretted it. You won't either.
Do you wash your lemons before you zest them? I do. You never know what lurks on the skins of your lemons. Not to be indelicate or anything, but lemons are grown in hot dry climates for the most part, and you know what proliferates in hot dry climates? Flies.
Those clusters of little black or brown dots you may see here and there on your lemon skins . . . fly dirt. SO I wash my lemons. Unwaxed, waxed, no matter. Also there are pesticides which are used.
So I just give the skins a good wash under cold running water and use a veggie bush to give them a bit of a scrub and then dry them with a soft dry cloth.
I could be wrong of course . . . but what then if I am right. Its not a chance I like to take. Mind you, when I was a child I thought banana seeds were spider eggs, lol. I didn't eat a banana for years on that presumption, lol.
Do use real lemon juice in this cake. Please don't use the little squeeze lemon bottles of reconstituted juice. It just is not the same. There is a huge difference in flavor.
It might be re-constituted from real lemon juice, but there's other stuff in there. I can smell it and I can taste it. Just don't. Real, fresh lemon juice is the way to go.
How else are you going to get that lovely fresh zest anyways? Unless you use fresh lemons. Eh?
There is something magical about buttermilk that renders every baked good it touches deliciously moist. Some sort of chemical reaction. I am no chemist, but I love buttermilk anything. Cakes, cookies, loaves, pies, biscuits, breads . . .
All are fabulous. If you don't have any buttermilk, you can make a suitable substitute by adding 1 TBS of lemon juice to a measuring cup and adding the amount of liquid buttermilk you need in whole milk to take its place. Let it sit for five minutes to clabber.
Vinegar will do the same thing. I used to have to do this a lot in the UK because I couldn't always find buttermilk. I don't know what was up with that.
Ireland is steeped in buttermilk, but in the UK? Largely an unsung hero. If you could find it at all, it was only ever in 1 cup sized pots. I am so grateful to be back in the land of buttermilk.
Have you ever marinated your chicken in buttermilk before you cook it? Oh boy, but does it ever make for tender chicken.
One of my favorite chicken recipes is this Buttermilk Chicken. Oh boy but it is some juicy and delicious. I haven't made it in a while. Time to make it again methinks.
Even more lemon flavor comes from the lush lemon glazed which gets spooned over top of the cake. Its just icing sugar, cream and lemon juice, oh and a bit of lemon zest.
The cake is lovely without it, but the glaze turns lovely into magnificent. Devine!! Lush!!! Beautiful!!!!
If you have time to bake only one cake this weekend, let it be this one. You won't regret it. I can promise you that!
You could inject even more lemon flavor into the cake by brushing it with a simple lemon syrup when it comes out of the oven. I sometimes do. Simply warm together 1/4 cup of sugar (50g), 1/4 cup of water (60ml) and 1 1/2 TBS of lemon juice, until the sugar completely dissolves.
Using a pastry brush, brush it on top of the lemon loaf, letting it soak in and brushing it on some more, repeating until you have used it all up.
There is no two ways about it. This is one fabulous lemon cake. Enjoy!!
Lemon Buttermilk Cake
Yield: One 8 X 4 inch loaf
Prep time: 10 MinCook time: 40 MinTotal time: 50 Min
This beautifully moist loaf cake is bursting with lovely lemon flavors1
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 (210 grams)cups all purpose plain flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- 1/2 cup (120grams) butter, at room temperature
- 1 cup (195 grams) granulated sugar
- 1 TBS freshly grated lemon zest
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 2 large free range eggs
- 3 fluid ounces of buttermilk
- 2 TBS fresh lemon juice
For the glaze:
- 3/4 cup (95 gram) icing sugar, sifted
- 1/2 TBS heavy cream
- 1/2 TBS fresh lemon zest, plus some for dusting over the top
- 1 TBS fresh lemon juice
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350*F/180*C/ gas mark 4. Butter your loaf tin really well and line the bottom with baking paper. Set aside.
- Rub the lemon zest for the cake into the sugar in a bowl until it is really fragrant. Add the butter & vanilla. Beat until light and creamy. Beat in the eggs one at a time.
- Sift together the flour, baking powder, soda and salt. Whisk together the buttermilk and lemon juice.
- Beat the flour mixture into the creamed mixture, alternating wih the buttermilk, until everything is fully combined and all of the dry ingredients are thoroughly moistened. Scrape into the prepared loaf tin. Bang the tin on the counter a couple times to release any air bubbles.
- Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until well risen and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with only a few moist crumbs. The top should also spring back when lightly touched.
- Cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
- To make the glaze, whisk the icing sugar, cream 1/2 TBS of lemon zest and lemon juice together until smooth and of a drizzling consistency. Spoon over the cake and then sprinkle with about 1 teaspoon more of lemon zest.
- Cut into slices to serve.
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