This semester has been crazy - I'm working tons of hours and I still have class and Journal to attend to, so it's been wild! But, it's starting to relax a little, so that's good! I decided to do this month's Daring Bakers' Challenge, because I've embarrassingly missed the last two. Last month, in all fairness, was biscuits - I have baked way more than my fair share of those!
The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.
I decided to make a lemon bread that is reminiscent of a bread we used to get at my job in Ann Arbor. Everyday that we had interviews, we would get breakfast pastries catered in for the corporate recruiters. There were always croissants, which had been baked the day before and consequently tasted pretty sad - we used to joke that they must be fat free! My favorite thing was a lemon poppy seed bread with a strip of cream cheese filling through the middle. This bread is like that, though I must admit, the bread at work was better!
Lemon Cream Cheese Bread (Adapted from Land O Lakes) - Makes 2 Loaves
Lemon Cream Cheese Bread (Adapted from Land O Lakes) - Makes 2 Loaves
- 2 c sugar
- 1 c unsalted butter (softened)
- 4 eggs
- 1c milk
- 6 TBSP lemon juice
- 3 1/2 C flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 8 oz cream cheese (softened)
- 6 TBSP powdered sugar
- 1 egg
- Preheat oven to 350.
- Cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until smooth.
- Add in the milk and lemon juice and mix until combined.
- Mix in flour, salt, and baking powder. Mix together until well-combined.
- For the filling, cream together the cream cheese, powdered sugar, and egg until smooth.
- Pour one quarter of the batter into the bottom of two greased loaf pans. Pour half or the filling into each loaf pan. Pour the rest of the batter over the tops of each loaf.
- Bake for 50 minutes to an hour. Let rest for at least then minutes, and then turn out of the pan to cool.
