Cranberry & Almond Quick Bread

 

Bread Week! 2 words that used to strike fear into my heart – Regular readers may remember that over the past year I have grown in confidence with bread and yeast in particular. Quick Breads are the focus for this post’s recipe – A combination of Baking Powder/Bicarbonate of Soda mixed with buttermilk to create a bread like texture without the aid of yeast (and also without waiting hours to prove).

I chose a combination of tarty dried cranberries and rich almond marzipan to flavour this quick bread – I haven’t used cranberries in a bake for ages. To add that little bit of luxury, I couldn’t resist a drizzle of white chocolate on top of the bread.

So how did it turn out? Well delicious, but rather cake like in texture as you can probably tell from the photos. Probably because I forgot to add the buttermilk to the mixture so its a miracle that it worked at all. Here’s the recipe (including the buttermilk) if you fancy having a go yourself.

CRANBERRY & ALMOND QUICK BREAD

Serves	8+
Prep time	10 minutes
Cook time	1 hours, 20 minutes
Total time	1 hours, 30 minutes
Meal type	Bread, Snack

INGREDIENTS

• 300g Plain Flour
• 1.5 teaspoons Baking Powder
• 175g Butter (Melted)
• 175g Caster Sugar
• 3 Medium Eggs
• 75ml Buttermilk
• 55g Ground Almonds
• 55g Flaked Almonds
• 175g Dried Cranberries (Plus a handful extra for decoration)
• 100g Marzipan (Chopped into very small cubes)
• 50g White Chocolate (Melted)

DIRECTIONS

1.
Grease & Line a 2lb Loaf Tin and heat the oven to 160C
2.
Add the flour, baking powder, melted butter and sugar to a large bowl and combine – do not over mix
3.
Whisk the eggs and add alternately with the buttermilk to the flour mixture
4.
Add both types of almonds, cranberries and sprinkle in the marzipan
5.
Mix together as little as possible then add to the loaf tin and bake for 80mins
6.
Remove from the oven and as soon as possible remove from the tin and cool on a wire rack
7.
When cooled, drizzle the white chocolate over and arrange the remaining cranberries for decoration