Autumn Harvest Bread + Additional Suggestions
This is my own little, semi-quick recipe for a nice hearty bread filled with dried fruits and nuts. In a way it could almost be considered a "fruit cake", but not quite. Personally, I like fruit cake better with dried fruits instead of candied (and no citron, please X_x), but that'll be another recipe for another time. This recipe actually makes a few different things, based on the amount of fruit/nut mix used. I generally tend to make more than needed for the bread so I make something else with the mix.
Ingredients
- 1 box pumpkin bread mix Pillsbury Pumpkin Bread
- 1 cup milk goat
- 2 large egg brown
- 2 tbsp honey
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Suggested and Optional Ingredients
- blueberry dried
- cranberry dried
- raisin dried
- strawberry dried
- cherry dried
- fig dried
- walnut chopped
- pine nut
- pecan chopped
- almond chopped or sliced
- 1-2 dash cinnamon ground
- 1-2 dash nutmeg ground
- 1-2 dash clove ground
- 1-2 dash anise ground
Instructions
- Now this will be a fairly hearty bread depending on how much nuts/fruits you add. It's great fresh out of the oven and makes a wonderful dessert/snack.Basically follow directions on the box for the most part, replacing the water for goat milk and regular eggs with brown ones (or you can just use regular white ones). Add the honey, vanilla and a dash of each of the spices. Stir as directed on the box.In a separate bowl, mix all the nuts, fruits and a dash (or not) spices together. Be sure to leave some of your choice of toppings to the side. It doesn't matter if you have too much, I'll tell ya what you can do with any left overs. You kind of have to go with a feel on how much to add but basically you'll want about an even amount of each, give or take/more or less, depending on preference. For those who want generous nut/fruits in the bread, use about two good handful of the mix for every 1 box of the bread mix. Otherwise 1 handful will do (of course, that may depend on the size of your hand :p).Mix everything together and pour into loaf pans at about half way. Use the fruit/nut set aside to sprinkle on top before placing in oven to cook. Follow direction on the box on how long and what setting to cook the bread at.
Autumn Harvest sweet topping & granola bars:
- Place the mix in a pan and drizzle just enough honey to nicely coat the mix. Use low-medium heat and when the honey becomes a little runny from being warmed, sprinkle in the spices, if you hadn't already added them to the mix. I've added it as an option on this part because you would already have the same spices on the mix but you can add the same amount more for a more stronger spice flavor. Add more honey to make it more drizzly.To make it into a granola bar. Heat up some marshmallows with a little butter before adding the mix, but add only a little bit of honey if you want that for taste. Then when they are easy to handle without burning yourself shape them up and cool. Or you can put them all in a pan while hot and just cut squares. Essentially like you're making them marshmallow rice treats.
Notes
The reason I don't add measurements to the nuts/fruits, is because I'm leaving it up to you on how much ya want. You'll have to mix them up in a separate bowl anyways. For topping, pick one or two of the nuts or fruits you'd like to use as a topping and set some aside that you aren't going to use in any mix. I've placed pecans and almonds as optional cause I haven't used them in this recipe yet, but they'll also be good additions if you just love a nutty bread. Or you can leave out or add in which ever nuts you like. Same thing with the dried fruits.
If you don't feel like making something more from the fruit/nut mix leftovers you can leave it as is for a snack/trail mix. If you plan to do it this way, you can leave out the spices and only spice up the amount for the bread recipe or you can go ahead and spice them as usual and add some sugar and bake it for a bit. Just enough to caramelize some.