Grapenut (Grape-Nuts) Bread – recipe test

Got this recipe from a video by Glen and Friends. It came from "Cape Cod Kitchen Secrets", published in 1949.

Verdict: delicious! Somewhat reminiscent of banana bread, but with a bit of a malty flavor instead of banana. My husband loved it.

We thought it was good plain, and I also had it for breakfast this morning, toasted with a bit of cream cheese and raspberry jam. I actually felt that was a bit too sweet for my taste – if I planned to eat it this way, I'd probably cut down a little on the sugar in the bread. But just plain or with butter, it's nice the way it is.

Notes: I made the recipe exactly as written, including scalding the milk (I used the microwave) and double-sifting. I do not think the sifting is necessary with modern flour, it only changed my flour's volume by maybe 1 Tablespoon, so I wouldn't bother with that – just be sure to whisk all of the dry ingredients together thoroughly before adding them to the wet mixture since you don't want to over-stir the batter. You can wait until you've put the batter in the loaf pan to preheat your oven, since it has to sit for 20 minutes before baking. I baked mine for 60 minutes at 350.

Yield: 1 loaf

• 2 cups scalded milk
• 1 cup Grape-Nuts cereal
• 3 cups sifted all purpose flour
• 4 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg well beaten
• 3 tbsp. melted butter or margarine

Pour milk over grapenuts, cool. Sift flour once, measure, add baking powder, salt and sugar. Sift again. Add egg and shortening to grapenuts mixture and stir well, add flour mixture stirring only enough to dampen all flour – this is so that the grapenuts will not lose their form when the bread is baked. They should show up quite definitely. Turn into greased loaf pan, let stand 20 minutes. Bake in moderate oven 350 to 375° for about 1 hour.