How to Make Strawberry Pecan Bread

Fresh strawberries. Mmmmm…

I’m drooling just thinking about them.

Certainly one of my favorite things about early summer! Nothing beats the flavor of a fresh, sun ripened strawberry.

We use them to make jams and deserts. We smother our pancakes with them. Our kids will eat them right off the vine until their faces are red and sticky with sweet juice (not gonna lie, so do we).

There’s so many things you can do with strawberries. And if you’re like our family, we don’t like to let anything this good go to waste. So if you’re lucky enough to have a few berries left over after the kids hit him, here’s a good way to use them up.

This yummy recipe is so simple anyone can make it. Even if you’ve never made bread before!

But even if you don’t have fresh strawberries available, don’t worry. You can substitute with store-bought berries. Also, I love the flavor of pecans, but if you’d rather substitute for walnuts or almonds you can do that too. This recipe is easy to adapt to your favorite cravings! So feel free to experiment.

Here are a few recipe notes:

• If strawberries are out of season, try blackberries, raspberries or any other kind of fresh berry you can get your hands on!
• Try roasting your pecans before mixing into the batter. This will enhance their smoky flavor.
• I use homemade apple-pear sauce as a substitution for butter. This keeps the bread moist, gives it yummy flavor and cuts the calories quite a bit.
• This bread is completely dairy free. If that doesn’t matter to you, but you want to cut the oil, you can add a 1/4 cup of milk as a substitute.

Strawberry Pecan Bread

Serves 10-12

Ingredients

• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 3 cups + 2 tablespoon All Purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup applesauce (I used homemade apple-pearsauce)
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 4 large fresh eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups diced fresh strawberries
• 1 1/4 cups chopped pecans

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350F.

Grease or spray two 8.5″ x 4.5″ loaf pans.

Mix together sugar, flour, cinnamon, sea salt and baking soda in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, mix together applesauce, oil, eggs and vanilla extract.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry mix and beat gently with a mixer. Mix should be fluid  but not too liquid.

Slowly fold in the strawberries and pecans, then pour batter equally into each loaf pan.

Bake for 60 minutes, depending on oven. If top starts to darken, cover with foil that is slightly tented in the middle for last 10-15 minutes.

Remove and immediately flip bread out onto a cooling rack. Let stand for 5-10 minutes. Then serve with homemade butter.