Lime
Quick-Bread
As with my recipe for Lemon Squares, this started
out as lemon bread and got gentrified along the way. It's not that I don't like lemons; it's just
that they don't have the same cachet as limes.
(Lemons are the old friends you left at home when you moved to the city;
limes are your new best friends.) Since
juicing limes takes a little more work, lime dishes seem more appropriate for
company. Also, I like the pleasantly
scary look of a green-flecked baked good.
For the Bread:
3 cups cake flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room
temperature
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup milk (less 2 tablespoons)
2 Tablespoons fresh lime juice
(Don't put the lime juice into the milk or
the milk will curdle. This won't really
affect the bread, but it will
look sickening.)
1 Tablespoon grated lime rind
For the Glaze:
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1/4 cup sugar (preferably superfine)
Bread: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9- x-5-inch loaf pan. Into a medium bowl, sift together the flour,
baking powder and salt. Set them
aside. Cream the butter and sugar until
light. Add the eggs, one at a time. Then beat in the milk, the lime juice and the
lime rind. Add the dry ingredients and
mix only until they're combined. (I
never know what cookbooks mean when they say that. I guess they don't want you to go on blindly
beating and beating the batter. But why
would you?)
Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and
bake for 60 to 70 minutes or until a tester inserted in the middle of the bread
comes out clean.
Meanwhile, make the glaze.
Glaze: Stir together the glaze ingredients until
the sugar is dissolved. If you think of
it, give it a stir occasionally while the bread is baking so the sugar won't
settle out.
The moment the bread is done, without taking it
out of the pan, poke holes in it with a skewer and pour the lime glaze over the
top.
Cool the bread for 1/2 hour. Then carefully invert it onto a rack. Remove the pan and turn it right-side up to
finish cooling. Serve the bread the same
day you make it. It doesn't freeze well.
Makes one 9-x-5-inch loaf.
Source: Jeannette
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ottermum §" <ottermum@hotmail.com>
rec.food.baking newsgroup
August
13, 2002