Weekend Baking - Dates, Prunes and Walnut Bread.

Baked this beautiful bread over the Christmas weekend.
The baking saga started like this. I started browsing through my bookmarked baking recipes on friday morning which continues till sunday evening. There were rolls, buns, cakes, muffins, cookies and what not....I felt like going on a baking spree and start a baking marathon. You might ask me whats the hurry....But this is my last week with the Oven. Yes we are moving to a new house without an oven, and as the move is temperory, we do not want to invest on an oven. Iam going to miss Baking :(.
So I have planned to do as much as baking as possible, atleast try out my most favourite bookmarked recipes, take pictures and save it in my archives for future blogging. Managed to bake some cookies, a cake and this bread by sunday evening, quite satisfied with my work :)
While the cake was ok, this bread turned out great. The original recipe called for just Dates an Nuts. Since I had less quantity of dates, I throwed in some prunes and walnuts.

Recipe source:Joy of Baking
Ingredients:
1/2 cup walnuts
1 cup chopped and pitted dates
1 cup chopped and pitted prunes

1 cup boiling water
1 tsp baking soda

2 cups All purpose flour
1/2 cup light brown sugar
11/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnomon powder ( I used 1 tsp)
1 tsp  vanilla extract

1/2 cup cold butter
1 egg

Method.
Add the dates and prunes to 1 cup of boiling water, along with baking soda and allow it to cool(atleast 1 hr)
Preheat Oven to 180C. Grease and prepare a bread loaf tin for baking.

Beat the egg and vanilla essence in a seperate bowl

In a seperate bowl add the flour, sugar, cinnamon and baking powder. Mix well to combine.

Add the cold , soft butter to the flour mixture and using a electric beater or food processor, mix, till the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs.

Add the fruits along with the liquid.Add the chopped walnuts .Mix well to combine

Pour the mixture to the greased bread tin and bake in the preheated oven for 50 - 60 minutes.

This quick bread goes to the following events

 Divya's  - Show me your Cake
 Contribute your Recipes - Cakes and cookies at SpiceEtc.
Cakes and Cookies  At Sara's place