Date And Nut Bread Recipe

Date Nut Bread Ingredients:

5 ounce pitted dates, chopped finely
1 cup all purpose flour
1 small egg, whole
3 tablespoon butter or margarine, cut up
½ small cups sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ cup pecans or walnuts, chopped coarsely

Method:

1. Break the whole egg in a medium bowl and lightly beat it with the help of a wire whisk. Leave aside.
2. Preheat oven to 325 degree Fahrenheit. Lightly grease a medium size rectangular loaf pan.
3. Boil 1 cup water in a medium sauce pan over high heat. After a boil remove the pan from heat and stir in chopped dates and cut up butter or margarine. Let this mixture stand for at least 30 minutes or until it is cooled.
4. Combine all the white powders in a medium size bowl that are – all purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt.
5. Stir beaten egg in the date mixture with the help of a fork after it is cooled thoroughly. Eggs can coagulate if the date mixture is still hot. So the purpose of cooling the date mixture is to prevent egg coagulation.
6. Stir this egg and date mixture in the flour mixture only till it gets evenly moistened. Do not over mix the egg mixture along with the flour. Add walnuts or pecan to this mixture and mix lightly just to combine everything.
7. Spoon this batter on the greased loaf pan and spread it evenly. Place the loaf pan in the preheated oven to bake for about 60 to 70 minutes. Insert a toothpick at the center of the bread loaf after this time, if the toothpick comes out clean then consider the bread done. Remove bread from the oven and cool it over a wire rack for 5 to 10 minutes. Remove the pan and cool the bread again on the wire rack for 5 minutes. Before serving cut it into slices of desired thickness. This recipe makes 5 servings.

Health Tip:

• You may reduce the quantity of sugar in this recipe according to the sweetness of the dates. This is because pitted dates are already sweet and excess sugar can make the bread sweeter.
• Substitute brown sugar in place of refined white sugar. This little change will help to give a nice brown tinge to the bread along with the dates and also make the bread healthier.
• One serving of date nut bread provides 240 calories, 6 gm proteins, 18 gm carbohydrates and 9 gm fat.