You’ve been warned. I said I’d end up baking during these crazy pandemic times. After irrationally craving cinnamon rolls–it is a Sunday morning–, I settled on making a version of Joanna Gaines’ cinnamon swirl quick bread from her cookbook, Magnolia Table. As a Christmas present, I’ve looked through this cookbook, but haven’t had a time to tackle any recipes. Given my brunch cravings and the copious time on our hands, I settled on making Cinnamon Walnut Quick Bread, but a lightened up version of this classic. I still think it’s crazy that the original recipe for this bread was supposed to have 2½ c sugar and a third of a cup of oil. Here, we use just under three-fourths cup sugar, less than a tablespoon of oil, and mix coconut and raisins. It’s perfect right out of the oven, but I recommend it cooling longer than we did, since we were a bit too eager to slice it up, thus left with some crumbly pieces. Ted and I enjoyed this warm, served with a cup of coffee and a side of Greek yogurt and strawberries (see first photo after recipe!). It was the perfect stay-at-home Sunday brunch.
Ingredients (makes 1 loaf with 12 slices).
Filling & Topping:
- 1 T cinnamon
- 2 T coconut sugar
- 1 T shredded coconut
- 2 T oats
- 2 T raisins
- 2 T chopped walnuts
- 1 t flour
- 1/2 T coconut oil, at room temp, reserved for “topping”
Bread:
- 1 c flour
- 1 c almond flour
- 1/2 c turbinado sugar
- 1 t baking soda
- 1/2 t salt
- 1 c unsweetened almond milk *
- 1/2 lemon, juiced *
- 1 egg
- 1/4 c unsweetened applesauce
- 1 t vanilla extract
- 1/3 c chopped walnuts
* NOTE: you can use 1 c buttermilk; I just don’t have any, so I substituted milk + citrus, keeping the 1:1 ratio of buttermilk to regular milk.
Directions.
- Preheat oven to 350° F and grease a loaf pan.
- Combine ingredients for the filling, cinnamon through flour, in a small bowl and toss well. Do NOT add coconut oil yet. Set aside filling.
- In a large bowl, add dry ingredients for bread, flour through salt, and whisk well. Add the wet ingredients, milk through vanilla, and mix well until smooth batter forms. Fold in walnuts.
- Pour half the batter into the greased loaf pan. Generously coat with the reserved filling, still omitting coconut oil; you should have at least half remaining. Repeat the layers with the remaining batter and filling, so you have a layer of batter, then filling, batter again, and then filling on top.
- NOTE: I had leftover filling once both the middle layer and top were evenly coated. I removed any walnuts and raisins to add to the top and saved the remaining cinnamon sugar mixture to add to something like oatmeal.
- Using pea-sized crumbles of coconut oil, evenly distribute over the top of the bread, so the oil can melt during baking.
- Bake for 40-50 min. Remove when toothpick comes out clean. You may need to place foil over top to prevent burning if bread requires a longer baking time.
- Let cool for 10 min before trying to remove from pan. Then cool on wire rack.
- Slice up and enjoy!
Adapted from Joanna Gaines‘ recipe, “Cinnamon Swirl & Walnut Quick Bread with Walnut Topping” in Magnolia Table.
Nutrition for 1 of 12 slices.
180 calories • 8.8 g fat (42%) • 22.4 g carbs (48%) • 4.7 g protein (10%) • 2 g fiber • 12.4 g sugar
• 120 mg sodium
* These are estimates based off specific products I used and how I entered ingredients in a fitness tracker. This is completely subjective and used to give a rough nutritional estimate.
