Homemade Christmas Bread

One of the best times of the year to enjoy family and friends is Christmas time. It is a wonderful time to spoil the ones we love with delicious recipes. The flavors and aromas of Christmas are linked to beautiful moments that remain engraved in our senses throughout the years. This Christmas bread is no exception.

Many countries have culinary traditions where spices are the protagonists. My favorite spices this season are cinnamon, cloves and anise. They are spices that bring back beautiful memories of my family preparing cookies and breads for Christmas. That is why today I am sharing with you a Christmas bread recipe that has been in my family for more than 3 generations.

This Christmas bread has a compact but soft texture. It has lots of nuts and aromas that invite you to eat more than one piece. My husband, who is Italian and whose customs make panettone the king of Christmas bread, succumbed to my family's Christmas bread from the first time he tasted it. Don't tell the "nona", but my husband always asks me to prepare this bread for him and leaves the panettone for very specific occasions 😄.

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To prepare this Christmas bread, you need:


3 cups of wheat flour	1 cup unsalted butter
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar	1 cup of liquid milk
6 teaspoons baking powder	8 eggs
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon	1/2 cup rum
1 teaspoon ground cloves	1/2 cup raisins
1 teaspoon ground anise	1/2 cup walnuts
1 tablespoon instant coffee	1/2 cup candied fruit

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Place the butter in a bowl and beat until a soft, whipped texture is obtained.

Continue beating and gradually add the sugar until everything is homogeneously integrated.

Add the eggs one by one and then the spices (cinnamon, cloves, and ground anise) and the instant coffee.

Once these ingredients are integrated, we gradually add the flour.

When the mixture thickens a little, add the rum. Then add flour again. When the mixture thickens again, add all the milk.

This alternation between liquids (rum and milk) and flour should give us a thick and homogeneous mixture.

Place the nuts, candied fruit and raisins in a bowl. Sprinkle with a little wheat flour and soak everything well.

Add the fruits to the mixture and integrate the ingredients well with wrapping motions.

To bake this bread, you can pour the mixture into waxed paper molds. Only fill 3/4 of their capacity. Remember that the dough will rise.

You can also use other types of molds. You can grease and flour them or line them with waxed paper.

When you have poured the mixture into the molds, bake for 45 minutes at 180 ºC.

To give a beautiful touch to our Christmas bread, you can make a frosting by dissolving some powdered sugar in liquid milk and garnish with some nuts or cranberries.

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Every time I prepare this bread with fruits and nuts, I feel like I'm in a Christmas movie. This Christmas bread brings a lot of life to my home table.

This recipe yields 4 units of approximately 800 grams. It is a quantity that does not last long since at home we eat it at breakfast or snack time. However, my husband cuts a little piece every time he goes to the kitchen and eats it. He looks like a little mouse. When I realize there are only crumbs left of this delicious Christmas bread.