At Christmas time I enjoy preparing many kind of sweets to celebrate these festive days. It is common to use raisins and all kind of dried fruits. Nuts form part of this variety of sweets, candied oranges, ginger and cherries are a favorite at home. Today I am using raisins, cherries and candy pawpaw to make this delicious bread.

This year I haven't been able to prepare many dishes because my health is not very good, but I made my best effort to prepare this bread which is a favorite of my grand children. I made two, 0ne for us and the other is for my friend Imara who is suffering cancer too.

In England they prepare a black Christmas pudding full of fruits that have being immersed in brandy, they prepare it one month before Christmas day and they bath the pudding with liqueur weekly say brandy or rum. It is really delicious and it is very popular. You can make a version with my Christmas bread using more fruits and blending prunes with some rum and adding it to the whole preparation.

Ingredients needed for the preparation:

• 6 eggs
• 500 grams of self raising flour
• 400 grams of sugar
• 250 grams of butter
• 1 orange rind
• 100 grams of raisins
• 100 grams of pawpaw candy
• 1 spoon of baking powder
• cherries
• 250 ml of milk
• 1 spoon of vanilla essence
• sliced almonds to decorate, optional

Preparation:

• Mix the sugar, butter and the vanilla essence in a bowl

• Mix well with the hand whisk

• Add the eggs one by one and mix every time until they are all incorporated

• Add half flour together with the baking powder and mix well

• Add the milk and the rest of the flour and mix well

• Wet the raisins and the cherries and add flour

This step is important so that the fruits don't drop to the bottom of the bread

• You need two bread tins, grease them and add the mixture. Place the fruits on top pushing the fruits with the fingers smoothly

• Cook in the oven for 50 minutes at 180°C

• Cool and cut in slices. My children eat them with milk

All the photos were taken with my Redmi 7