Bisexual Berry Bread
A friend of mine invited me to a pride-themed tea party this month (aka an LGBTea party), so of course I immediately started thinking about what baked treat I could bring that would be thematically appropriate. My go-to contribution for potluck meals is a loaf of quick bread, since I have an excellent base recipe which can be used for banana bread, pumpkin bread, zucchini bread, pear bread... Basically take any fruit or vegetable that might conceivably be good in bread, and it will probably work in this recipe. For the pride theme, I chose raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries as my mix-ins, to mimic the pink/blue/purple colors of the bi flag. Thus was born Bisexual Berry Bread!
Credit where it's due: the base recipe I use for quick bread is roughly based on Smitten Kitchen's pear bread recipe. My recipe is more loosey-goosey in its measurements because I've found that in this case it doesn't matter all that much if you measure your flour or butter or sugar exactly, the bread will be tasty regardless.
Bisexual Berry Bread
Ingredients
Base dry ingredients
- around 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/8 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- Several shakes each of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and ginger (if you're not sure you added enough, add a little more)
Base wet ingredients
- around 3/4 stick of butter (preferably slightly softened) (I usually use salted butter but unsalted is ok too)
- around 1 cup sugar (I usually do half granulated and half brown sugar)
- 1 or 2 eggs (either work, I prefer 2)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 spoonful vanilla Greek yogurt (optional)
- If dough feels too dry, a splash of water/lemon juice/milk (depending on which one best matches the other flavors you're using)
Mix-in Variations
- Bisexual Berry variation: raspberries, blackberries, blueberries
- Mashed banana and chopped walnuts
- Pumpkin puree and chopped pecans
- Grated pear
- Grated apples
- Grated zucchini
- Dried cherries and lemon juice
- Dried cherries and cocoa powder
- Blueberries and lemon juice
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350F.
- Lightly grease an 8x4 inch loaf pan.
- Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Ideally you will have taken the butter out of the fridge a little while ahead of time so it's a bit soft. However, I hardly ever remember to do this, so I usually just break down the cold butter with my hands and sort of knead it into the sugar, which works well enough.
- Add the remaining wet ingredients. If you're using liquid or mushy mix-ins like lemon juice, banana, or pumpkin puree, add those here. Mix thoroughly.
- Measure out the flour into the bowl. Before mixing it into the wet ingredients, measure out the remaining dry ingredients on top of the flour. The idea here is to avoid mixing the rising agents into the liquid until the last moment, so they are still reacting when they go into the oven. (You could always just mix all the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl, but who wants to use a second bowl? Not me.) Powdery mix-ins like cocoa powder can be added here too.
- Mix everything together just until the flour disappears.
- Add any solid mix-ins, like whole berries or nuts. Mix until they're somewhat evenly dispersed throughout the batter.
- Quickly scrape the batter into the prepared pan and put it in the oven. If you want, you could sprinkle toppings on top of the loaf at this stage, like poppy seeds or nuts or turbinado sugar.
- Bake for 350F for about an hour. Ovens vary, so I'd advise to start checking on it at 50 minutes. It's done when it's nicely brown and craggy on top and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean or with just a crumb or two, no wet dough.
- Cool the bread in the pan for about 10 minutes.
- Put the loaf on a wire rack to cool completely.
- Slice and serve!