Date and Walnut Beer Bread

Of late, you must have noticed that I've quite a number of  'booze' posts in my blog.  Well, I was doing some cleaning up of my fridge not long ago and stumbled upon some cans of beer and stout lying idle in the cool comfort of the fridge.  Being a naive teetotaller I didn't realise that these booze do expire just like other foodstuff until I turned them over while rearranging them.  Gosh, they're going to expire in two months time and what am I going to do with them!  Fret not, I told myself, surf the net and that's exactly what I did ..........

This beer bread tastes somewhat between a cake and a bread.  When eaten fresh, it was soft, delicious with the crispy crust and no distinctive taste of beer at all.  Guess the alcohol content had all evaporated during the process of baking.

Recipe for Date and Walnut Beer Bread (I doubled the recipe to make 2 loaves)

Ingredients

• 12 oz self-raising flour OR 12 oz plain flour + 3 tsp baking powder sifted together.
• 3 Tbsp caster sugar
• 4 oz butter, melted
• 1 can/320 ml beer
• 1/4  tsp salt
• 60 gm dates, pitted and roughly chopped
• 60 gm walnuts, lightly toasted and roughly chopped
Method

1.  Melt the butter, let cool.
2.  Sift the flour with salt into a large mixing bowl. Add in the sugar and mix well.
3.  Pour in the beer, mix well.  Add in the melted butter and mix till well combined.
4.  Stir in the dates and walnuts, mix till just combined.
5.  Pour the batter into a 9 x 5 x 3 inch lightly greased and floured loaf pan.
6.  Bake in a preheated oven @ 180 deg.C for 45 mins. till golden brown.  Test with a skewer till it comes out clean.
7. Let bread cool in pan for about 10 mins. before unmoulding and letting it cool completely on a wire rack.

Note :  Heat up any leftovers and serve with butter & jam or have them plain.

 

I'm submitting this post to Bake Your Own Bread.