Cherry, Almond, Chocolate Quick Bread
My quest for the perfect chocolate/cherry bread goes on, but after a couple of failed attempts at a raised dough, I consulted my sister and we concluded that a quick bread might work better with the ingredients in question. Not quite a bread, but definitely worth an attempt.
Here's today's cast but with one exception; I was looking at a couple of recipes and mistakenly included the cocoa powder when I should have included semisweet chips. Whoops.
Dry ingredients were combined in a large mixing bowl.
The cherries and chips were tossed in to coat.
Eggs, buttermilk and extracts were combined in another bowl. The recipe called for vanilla and almond; I decided to use the almond and subbed in cherry extract for the vanilla.
I had mail ordered the cherry extract from Olive Nation. It smelled sooo good!
The wet ingredients were combined with the dry and then melted butter was incorporated as well.
The resulting batter was quite loose.
I sprayed a loaf pan with the Pam that contains flour and poured the batter in.
Sliced almonds were sprinkled over the top and the whole thing went into a 350F oven for 55 minutes. I checked it at the end of the time and ended up baking for a total of 65 minutes.
The top of the loaf had split quite significantly but it smelled great! I decided against sprinkling it with powdered sugar.
The quick bread was definitely more cake-like, which was not at all a bad thing! I loved that the cherry extract flavor was evident but I wouldn't have minded even a bit more. The only thing is, the chips and cherries had sunk to the bottom, despite having been coated in the dry ingredients first. I personally feel they should have been coated with a little flour but added at the very end. Mixing it around with the wet ingredients and then the melted butter undoubtedly removed the coating that would have suspended it in the batter properly.
The guys enjoyed it though and it's a definite "make again" for me!
Here is the promised link:
Cherry, Almond, Chocolate Quick Bread
Here's today's cast but with one exception; I was looking at a couple of recipes and mistakenly included the cocoa powder when I should have included semisweet chips. Whoops.
Dry ingredients were combined in a large mixing bowl.
The cherries and chips were tossed in to coat.
Eggs, buttermilk and extracts were combined in another bowl. The recipe called for vanilla and almond; I decided to use the almond and subbed in cherry extract for the vanilla.
I had mail ordered the cherry extract from Olive Nation. It smelled sooo good!
The wet ingredients were combined with the dry and then melted butter was incorporated as well.
The resulting batter was quite loose.
I sprayed a loaf pan with the Pam that contains flour and poured the batter in.
Sliced almonds were sprinkled over the top and the whole thing went into a 350F oven for 55 minutes. I checked it at the end of the time and ended up baking for a total of 65 minutes.
The top of the loaf had split quite significantly but it smelled great! I decided against sprinkling it with powdered sugar.
The quick bread was definitely more cake-like, which was not at all a bad thing! I loved that the cherry extract flavor was evident but I wouldn't have minded even a bit more. The only thing is, the chips and cherries had sunk to the bottom, despite having been coated in the dry ingredients first. I personally feel they should have been coated with a little flour but added at the very end. Mixing it around with the wet ingredients and then the melted butter undoubtedly removed the coating that would have suspended it in the batter properly.
The guys enjoyed it though and it's a definite "make again" for me!
Here is the promised link:
Cherry, Almond, Chocolate Quick Bread
Agree to adding the flour-coated cherries and chocolate chips to the mix at the end, just before all ingredients are completely combined to keep them suspended to prevent over mixing.
ReplyDeleteOther than that, it was a tasty loaf and definitely more like a cake. I'd do this again but the search still continues...
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