Tag Archives: tea bread

In pursuit of getting one step closer to crossing off #8 off of my 30 before 31, I pulled out a cookbook I received for Christmas from my brother-in-law and his girlfriend. It’s chock full of chocolaty perfection, and I was eager to make something Andy and I could quickly grab as a snack in between running errands and our household chores.
After perusing the book for a few minutes, I landed on this tea bread. It was pretty simple to whip up, and I thought with a couple of tweaks it would be pretty perfect for us.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 4 eggs lightly beaten
• 8 oz semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup craisins
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• zest of one orange
• 2 cups self rising flour
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Lightly grease a loaf pan and line the bottom with baking parchment.
2. Cream together butter and sugar in a bowl until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in the eggs one at a time, fully incorporating each. If the mixture starts to curdle beat in 1-2 tablespoons of the four.
4. Mix in the chocolate, the crasins, the pecans, the vanilla and the orange zest. Sift the flour and gently fold into the mixture.
5. Spoon the batter into the prepared loaf pan and create a small well down in the center with the back of a spoon.
6. Place loaf pan in the preheated oven and bake for 50 minutes to an hour.
7. Leave to cool in pan for 5 minutes then carefully turn our to finish cooling.
8. Serve in thin slices.

Notes:

• At first glance, it looks like I changed a lot of this recipe, and to a certain extent ,that is true. I replaced three of the ingredients because of Andy’s food allergies and my absolute disdain of raisins, but I  tried to stay close to the original recipe by swapping them for items that wouldn’t alter the integrity. There was still chocolate, dehydrated fruit, and nuts, so I think it all came out pretty true in the end.
• I left my bread in the full hour, and it came out a little drier than I like, which isn’t a problem if you are actually serving this with tea, but I think next time I’ll cut 5-10 minutes off the cook time.