Recipe 39: Fruit Loaf

So after 6 months of bread, I finally got to use some icing sugar again! Yes, Fruit Loaf is still bread but you know what I mean! It was pretty much cake with yeast in it!

So there was lots of ingredients involved in this one, the usual suspects: flour, yeast, salt & water. Then to add into this mix were milk, sugar, eggs and of course lots of different kinds of fruit! Off the top of my head, there was mixed peel, sultanas, raisins, apricot and I think a few I have missed – all of them dried.

This recipe required the dough hook (as you may know, I only have an electric hand whisk) and I thought I better listen to what the recipe says as it looked like the mixture wasn't going to be as thick as usual. It sort of done the job, never perfect as always! Fast forward to two weeks later when I had to use my hand whisk to bake 84 cup cakes and it dies on me! So had a panic and rush out to get a new one! This means I will never be attempting to use the hand whisk as a replacement dough hook again!

Anyway, back to the Fruit Loaf! The dough is then left to rise in the bowl to mix in so it was pretty messy! I was worried when I looked at it over an hour later than it hadn't risen well but comparing the pictures afterwards, it definitely did!

In the meanwhile, I also prepared the icing sugar and grated the zest of a lemon and mixed them together.

After the rising, it was time to shape them which was very difficult because it's so sticky but eventually managed to get them into some kind of formed shape and then left them to prove again.

Once proved, it's at last time to bake! The smell throughout the house is amazing, it smelt just like Christmas! When the loaves come out of the oven, I left to cool for around 5-10 minutes and then dribbled the prepared icing sugar over them, which fell down the loaves so lovely and melted into them!

Reviews? Everyone loved these! I served these up on Father's Day which went down a treat, some said it was the best bake yet! I think these will be done again at some point, maybe around Christmas!