Christmas Bishop’s Bread – Dried Fruit & Nut Loaf

  • Prep Time
    20 mins
  • Cook Time
    50 mins
  • Serving
    5
  • Ready In
    70 mins

Low-carb Christmas Bishop's Bread - Dried Fruit & Nut Loaf

This elegant Low-carb Christmas Bishop’s Bread or Dried Fruit & Nut Loaf is part of the set table at Christmas.  Hungarians usually also call this cake to Bishop’s Bread. It’s very easy to bake and can be done quickly. With a little decoration it could be made beautiful and festive.

The Low-carb Christmas Bishop’s Bread made with shredded mixed dried fruits stays fresh for a long time, so you don’t have to bake it at the last minute. There is also a yeast dough version of this, but the simplest is the mixed dough version, plus it’s easier to make with keto-friendly flours like almond flour, coconut flour and ground walnuts. The more types of dry matter you put into it, the finer it will be. You can also include prunes, apricots, (“candied” with sweetener), orange peel, raisins, or dates. In the keto version, dried fruits can be replaced with various seeds and chopped dark chocolate.

A little curiosity about the cake.  When I calculated the nutrition fact of this Christmas Bishop’s Bread – Dried Fruit & Nut Loaf, I became aware of an interesting thing: 100 g of raw cranberry contains only 4.3 g of sugar, while (sweetened) dried cranberry contains 72.5 g* !!!!! sugar.  Although, I understand that during drying, the fruit loses its water content, and at least half of its weight, but in the meantime, how will the sugar content be almost 17 times of the original weight??? I checked this up and found this explanation for the fruit drying:

Drying is basically a fruit preservation process. As a result, the treated fruit loses most of its water content and weight. This is the oldest method of preservation, already the inhabitants of the Chinese Empire, or the ancient Greeks, Romans, preserved most of their food (even fish and meat). Our ancestors mostly dried crops in the sun or on fire, later built dryers and ovens. Until the advent of beet sugar, this was the only way to preserve the fruit.

One way of industrial drying is to dry pre-cooked fruits. In doing so, the dried fruits owe their sweet taste and excellent texture to the large amount of sugar added to the cooking water. This operation is called drafting, in which the raw material (e.g., sliced apples, bananas, etc.) is cooked in sugar broth so that a large amount of sugar is absorbed by the flesh. The process takes place in a vacuumed space, which causes the gases in the flesh to escape and be replaced by the sugar molecules in the cooking water. Because the sugar that has entered cannot evaporate, it remains in the dehydrated fruit. This explains the extremely high sugar content and sweet taste of dried fruits bought in stores.

 

* nutrition information is provided by the USDA

So, if you could make this gorgeous Low-carb Christmas Bishop’s Bread with your own dried fruits, it might be the best, as your dried fruit would contain much less natural sugar and no added sugar at all. If you don’t have the opportunity to do that, either leave them out of your cake or use only a few of them.

Ingredients

Nut and Fruit Sponge Cake Bread

To dekorate

Nutrition

1 slices of cake

  • Daily Value*
  • Calories: 370
    18.5 %
  • Fat: 29.5 g
    18 %
  • Total carbs: 20 g
    30.8 %
  • Sugar: 10.3 g
    25.6 %
  • Fiber: 9.4 g
    37.5 %
  • Net carbs: 10.6 g
    26.6 %
  • Protein: 9 g
    12 %
  • Potassium: 530 mg
    15 %
  • Sodium: 298 mg
    13 %

    Directions

    Step1

    Line the bread tin with parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 180 C / 350 F degree.

    Step2

    Separate the eggs. Put the egg whites and yolks in a separate bowl.

    Step3

    Melt the butter (1.5 minutes in the microwave) and cool to room temperature.

    Step4

    Start whipping the eggs with the sweetener and add the butter per spoon as well.

    Step5

    Add the orange zest and flavor and mix.

    Step6

    Beat the egg whites into a hard foam. (Always do this operation with a clean mixing head because the egg white will not be frothy!)

    Step7

    Prepare the flour mixture with baking powder and chop the dried fruits, nuts and dark chocolate.

    Step8

    Add the chopped dried fruits, nuts and dark chocolates and mix it.

    Step9

    Add into the dough the flour mixture and mix well.

    Step10

    Add the beaten egg whites and mix gently.

    Step11

    Put the dough into the mold.

    Step12

    Adjust the dough evenly and place in the preheated oven.

    Step13

    The sponge cake is baked in about 40-50 minutes. Check with a needle test. When done, take it out of the oven and let it cool.

    Step14

    While the cake is cooling, melt 100 g of dark chocolate with a spoonful of butter or coconut fat and pour over the already cold cake. Smooth and decorate with a few grains of pecans (I toasted the pecans in the microwave for 2x1 minutes), chopped dried fruit and sprinkle with powdered sweetener as if it was snowy. Cut slices of about 10x2 cm from it.

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