Give this large apricot bread recipe a try and you’ll find a delicious way to use up some of those extra apricots. In our neck of the woods, the apricots ripen later than everywhere else so we’ve only just finished summer harvesting. Our apricots are canned with pineapple, dried, or cooked down into apricot butter or a sweetened base for baking and then frozen. This recipe makes 3 full loaves to eat, share, and freeze for later using the cooked down sweetened apricots. You can easily substitute pureed canned or cooked pumpkin to make this into pumpkin bread.
I’ve recently switched to organic cane sugar as we are trying to eliminate gmo beet or corn sugar in our diet. Some of you may have noticed a marked bad mood after eating corn? That is sure a big deal in our house. We are ok with organic corn but the sky is definitely falling if we get into gmo corn or corn syrup.
To use thickened apricots: I washed and removed pits from apricots, filled a sauce pan halfway with the apricot halves and enough water to just cover the apricots, simmer them down until the apricots can be mashed and the mixture is thick enough that a spoon dipped in the apricots will be coated. If your apricots were on the more tart end of taste, you can add a little bit of sugar to cut the tartness. Store the apricot base in quart-sized ziplock freezer bags and freeze until needed for a recipe.
Tips for baking apricot bread
Gluten Free Apricot Bread
Course: DessertCuisine: EuropeanDifficulty: Easy3
Loaves10
minutes55
minutesThree loaves of delicious gluten free and dairy free apricot bread to eat, share, and freeze.
Ingredients
4 C. Thickened cooked apricots (see note) or pureed pumpkin
2 1/2 C. Sugar
6 Eggs
1 C. Oil (I used olive oil)
2 tsp. Vanilla extract
2 1/12 tsp. Xantham gum
1/2 tsp. Salt
2 tsp. Cinnamon
2 tsp. Baking soda
2 1/2 C. Brown rice flour
2 1/2 C. Tapioca starch
1 C. Potato starch (not flour)
2 C. Chocolate chips (Can use dairy free version)
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease 3 loaf pans and set aside.
- In a mixer bowl, mix the apricot or pumpkin, sugar, eggs, oil, and vanilla until smooth and combined.
- Slowly add the dry ingredients: xantham gum through potato starch. Add the chocolate chips last.
- Divide batter evenly among the loaf pans.
- Bake for approx. 50-60 minutes until knife inserted in the center comes out clean or inner temperature reaches above 180-200 degrees.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool in the pans on wire rack. Run a knife along edges and invert to remove bread from pan. Allow to fully cool before slicing.
- Store extras in an air tight bag in the freezer.
Notes
- Apricots that have been cooked down until a spoon dipped into the mixture stays coated on the back when lifted out. If your apricots are on the more tart side, you can slightly sweeten them with a bit of sugar stirred into the apricots. After cooking, you can send the mixture through a blender to smooth if you wish but I don’t bother.
