Week 3 of #greatbloggersbakeoff2014 and it’s bread week. Not one of my favourites I have to admit, to me baking is all about the cake!
Nevertheless I’m not one to shy away from a challenge. My dad gave me this week a huge bag of fresh blackberries from his garden, and they seemed like the perfect place to start. As we seem to be rapidly heading headlong into Autumn, blackberry and apple seemed a perfect combination.
I used this Mill of Kintyre apple bread recipe as my base, omitting the apricots and scaling down by about a third.
The blackberries I divided into half, to use separately for the fruit-studded centre, and to fill the outer rolls.
Those for the center I spread on a baking tray and dried out a little, on a low heat for an hour. Using them completely fresh would have added too much moisture and undoubtedly caused some problems with the bread dough!
For the filled outer rolls, I boiled the remaining blackberries up with some sugar to make a quick jam. Although it would have set down fully having enough time, I passed it through a sieve quickly to get only the juiciest fruit.
No pictures of the roll-making and filling process as it was rather sticky! Essentially I flattened each ball of dough, added a teaspoon of jam, and pinched and folded back into a ball. In reality my hands were entirely covered in sticky bread dough and jam :-)
Overall I’m pleased with the bake – it’s a perfect breakfast loaf, sweet and tangy and full of yummy fruit!
Read more about #greatbloggersbakeoff2014 and see this weeks other bakes here.