Candid Cook: Pear Bread

We had some yumminess at our house this morning.  Kelsey can't get enough of it, but Connor likes it, too.  Maddox won't try any, but I think it's because he has a cold and he's not eating anything right now.  It's all kinds of delicious.

Yesterday I was looking at some red anjou pears in my fruit bowl that had come in my produce co-op and needed to be used.  The last batch I had didn't quite ripen the way I like to eat them, and ended up being wasted.  I didn't want that to happen again, and I remembered this recipe for pear bread was given to me by a friend years ago.   I modified the recipe by adding a little extra spice and cutting back on the sugar.  If I were to make it again, I might cut back on the oil as well.  Regardless, it was delicious!  It should be noted that I also used raw sugar (sucanat) for my sweetener rather than the white sugar, so my loaves look darker than yours probably will.

Pear Bread

2 cups peeled, shredded pears (about 4 pears)

1 1/2 cups sugar (white or sucanat)

3 eggs

3/4 c oil

3 cups flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 Tablespoon cinnamon

2 dashes of cloves (optional)

3 dashes of nutmeg (optional)

I guess I should have taken a picture of how I grated the pears, but I realized pretty quick that I need to just peel it whole and then grate the pear directly off the core.  It went so much faster than the first pear where I cut it into sections and then tried to grate it.  I wasted a lot of pear that way, too.

Anyway, once you have your pears shredded, put them into a bowl and add your sugar, eggs, and oil. 

Mix well.

Now this is where you are going to see what a lazybones I an in the kitchen.  You are supposed to mix the dry ingredients together, make a well in the center, then mix the wet ingredients together and dump them into the center and mix.  However.  That gets too many dishes dirty for me.  So, I mixed my wet ones first, then I sprinkled my dry ingredients on top, starting with the flour.  That way they'll get evenly distributed as I stir without clumping up.

And when you're done, it looks like this:

Spread it into 2 greased bread pans. (My fondest wish is to have 2 of the Pyrex bread pans, but I never remember that until I'm actually baking bread.  I currently only have 1, and I like my bread pans to match. Weird, I know.)

Bake it at 325 degrees Fahrenheit (in a preheated oven, don't forget!) for 1 hour and 15 minutes. When you're done, the house will smell amazing and it'll look delicious, like this:

When I make my first batch of sweetbread, it feels like Fall has finally arrived!