My friend Karen hates fruit. Seriously, how do you hate fruit? My dear friend claims it’s mostly a texture thing, not really a flavor thing. So when she was visiting us from New York I decided to take up the challenge: could I change the texture and get Karen to eat something with fruit in it? I thought I’d try couching it in a sweet bread, and I had just the recipe to try.
I enlisted my three year old to help make it– how can you turn down a three-year-old’s culinary masterpiece?
This pear bread is a staple in our breakfast repertoire; the kids adore it. We were about to find out if Karen would, too.
There’s a lot of fruit in this bread, too, and it’s not mashed.
But lo and behold, she LOVED IT. And, in fact, she took the recipe and makes it on her own all the time.
One of the great things about this recipe is that it is all done by hand; no need for a stand mixer or any tools besides a knife and a wooden spoon.
This recipe was originally called Paradise Pear Bread, but Karen re-dubbed it “Pearadise Bread.” How did they not think of that in the first place?
Pearadise Bread
(adapted from Rise and Dine America, by Marcy Claman)
- 2 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour (such as King Arthur’s)
- 1/2 cup flaxseed meal
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 3/4 cup vegetable oil
- 3 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1 cup sugar (the original recipe calls for 2 cups, but I find one is more than sweet enough)
- 2 cups (or more, depending on your taste) extra-ripe pears, peeled and diced
- 1 tablespoon vanilla
Preheat the oven to 350º. Combine the flour, flaxseed meal, soda, powder salt and cinnamon in a large bowl. Combine the oil, eggs, sugar, pears, and vanilla. Add to the dry ingredients, stirring until just moistened. The batter will be quite thick, almost like cookie dough. Spoon the mixture into two greased loaf pans. Bake for 30 – 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes before removing from pans. Or just leave them in there, because the loaves will be gone within a day.