Cherry and Vanilla Quick Bread and An Announcement…

Good Afternoon!!! I cannot believe I’m about to say this, but my little blog has received 10,000 page views!!!!! (Sorry for the exclamation overuse!) Thank you so much to everyone for your continued support and I really hope you enjoy my site and all my recipes as much as I enjoy sharing them with you.

As you may have also noticed, Annie’s Noms has had a bit of a facelift. I wanted a cleaner, simpler layout which had tiny hints of my favourite shade of green 🙂 My boyfriend has been an absolute star and spent the last couple of days sorting out and editing my layout until I was happy with it, ‘cos as I’m sure you know I repel technology. It goes straight over my head, I can work a computer to surf the internet, post a blog recipe, I can photo edit on Photoshop, but anything more complex and I just call for my boyfriend 🙂

I’m sure you’ll notice I now have all my social icons right at the top so no more scrolling down and using mismatched badges from the websites themselves. I’m much easier to contact! The pages are now at the top which again, I think, looks much neater.

I’m still pushing forward to become more professional and take my blog to the next step which is having a business. I’ve got in contact with the Princes Trust to find out more about an Enterprise program which would show me what it’s like to run your own company and if they liked my idea enough I could even gain financial support to start up. I’m really crossing everything that I hear something back.

I still want to start small, perhaps with a boot sale or market stall, then go into having an online business before one day opening my own shop. That is the dream and I’m going to work my bum off to get it!

Anyway, I fancied something different for breakfast a few weeks back, had some buttermilk in the fridge, dried cherries in the cupboard so decided to make this quick bread. It was gorgeously flavourful, sweet and tart and perfect toasted with a little butter. I would definitely make this again as it’s delicious 🙂

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Makes 1 loaf

Recipe adapted from What Megan’s Making

Ingredients:

> 2 cups plain flour
> 1tbsp baking powder
> 1 egg
> 1 cup caster sugar
> 4tbsp butter
> 1 cup buttermilk
> 2tsp vanilla extract
> 1 1/2 cups dried cherries

Method:

> Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C/350F and line a loaf tin. (Mine is about 9″ x 3″)
> Place the flour and baking powder in a small bowl and briefly mix together.
> Place the butter in a small saucepan and melt over a low heat.
> Leave to one side to cool slightly. Place the egg and sugar in a large bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer.
> Beat until light and creamy and it almost holds a trail. This will take about 2 minutes.

> Add in the melted butter.
> Mix until well incorporated.
> Add in the buttermilk.
> Mix until well incorporated.
> Add in the vanilla.
> Place the dried fruit into the bowl with the flour in.
> Toss to combine, make sure all the fruit is covered, this will stop it sinking during baking.
> Add your dry ingredients to your wet.
> Mix until well combined.

> Pour into your loaf tin and level off as best you can.
> Place in the oven and bake for 50-60 minutes until golden brown and an inserted skewer comes out clean.
> Leave to cool in the tin for 20 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
> Will keep at room temperature well wrapped in cling film for about 4 days.