A tender quick bread made with sweet potatoes, raisins, orange juice, cinnamon and pecans, with an oatmeal crumble topping. Serve with my whipped honey butter with cinnamon.

Southern Sweet Potato Bread

So, the calendar says that we've reached the Autumnal Equinox, meaning summer is now officially over and that it's finally fall.

Somebody needs to tell Mama Nature to hurry on up and turn on the air conditioning down in this part of the good ole U.S. of A. because the heat is definitely still on.

That's typical though, while a lot of y'all are enjoying nice, crisp seasonal changes, we're still in beach weather for awhile. We're pretty accustomed to it being this way, but at least it's a good excuse to start featuring a few fall dishes.

I developed this bread to bring to a party The Cajun and I were going to and was really thrilled with the way that it turned out. I knew I wanted it to be a sweet bread but not overly sweet, both because I was using a canned in syrup sweet potato product, but also wanted to add texture with a sweet topping of oatmeal and brown sugar crumble.

I also liked the idea of bringing in a citrus element, and decided to use a combination of orange juice, with brown sugar and granulated sugar, to accent the sweet potatoes.

It turned out to be a very moist and delicious bread, with what I felt was just the right amount of sweetness.

Here's how to make it.

Place raisins into a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until plump; drain and set aside. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Spray two 9 x 5-inch loaf pans with Baker's Joy cooking spray and set aside.

Drain the sweet potatoes and add to a large bowl. I am using canned sweet potatoes in syrup. If you sweet potatoes are not in syrup, you'll need to make some adjustments in the added sugar.

>Mash the sweet potatoes and add the brown sugar, granulated sugar, orange juice, milk, eggs and cooled melted butter.

Blend together.

Sift the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and grated nutmeg into a bowl, add the nuts and toss to coat them.

Add the dry mixture to the wet.

Blend together.

Fold in the raisins.

Spoon evenly into the two prepared loaf pans.

For the topping, crumble the butter into the flour.

    Add in the brown sugar, oats and pecans.

Sprinkle evenly on top of the batter of both loaves and lightly pat it into the batter.

Bake at 325 degrees F for about 55 minutes to 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean. Cool the bread in the pan on a cooling rack for about 15 minutes.

Turn out, taking care not to knock off the topping, and allow to cool completely on the rack.

Serve with honey butter. Makes 2 loaves

Serve this up with some of my Whipped Honey Butter with a little cinnamon stirred in.

Tip: I already have a clever tip on how to keep a variety of juices in the freezer all the time - so be sure to check that out. But there are times you need a little more than a tablespoon or two. For those times, it's handy to keep a container of frozen orange juice concentrate on hand.

Fill a measuring cup with water - just slightly under the amount of juice you'll need. Scoop out a tablespoon of the concentrate and blend it into the water, adding additional frozen concentrate until it tastes right! Seal the frozen concentrate back up and return it to the freezer for next time.




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Posted by Mary on September 22, 2010

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100910/BRBD

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