It never fails that every holiday season my inner baker comes out to play. Let’s face it – a turkey or glazed ham are great but nothing says the holidays like a sweet treat. I started my holiday baking season by checking my fridge & pantry for holiday supplies I already purchased. I quickly honed in on handcrafted local Danzeisen Dairy eggnog and dark & flavorful Mexican chocolate that had been in my pantry for months. I then thought wouldn’t it be great if I could merge the two into a sweet and savory quick bread? I decided I wanted a slightly denser bread than normal since it would be something I would enjoy as a treat and with my coffee. The finished product has the spicy after notes of Mexican chocolate with a very subtle eggnog flavor. When I created this recipe I also decided to make it in a cake pan instead of a loaf pan since I knew I would enjoy smaller pieces of it at a time. However, you can easily cook it slightly longer and make it as a mini loaf or regular size loaf.
Ingredients
- 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp allspice
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup eggnog
- 4 Chai tea bags
- 1/2 cup melted European style Challenge butter
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 3 ounces grated Mexican Chocolate
- 3 ounces cocoa powder
Instructions
1 Preheat the oven to 350F. If using ceramic or metal, grease the bottom and the sides of a 9 by 13 inch baking cake pan.
2 Place eggnog with the Chai tea bags and Mexican chocolate in a sauce pan and bring to a very low simmer. Stir continuously. Gently simmer for an additional 10 minutes then remove from heat. Discard tea bags and cool eggnog mixture to room temperature.
3 In a mixing bowl add the flour, baking powder, salt, allspice, cocoa powder, nutmeg and sugar. Stir until combined and make a well in the middle.
4 In another bowl lightly beat the two eggs and mix them with the melted butter and vanilla extract.
5 Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ones and stir just until combined. I like to stop mixing a couple times to scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula since you don’t want to over mix.
6 Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
7 Cool slightly in the pan before removing.
8 Enjoy!
