Each year, it seems our neighbor/friend gift list gets longer and longer. I suppose it comes naturally with living somewhere for a while. You make more friends and acquantances over time. The problem is that we have a fairly limited budget for Christmas, so after making our list, I figured out that we could spend about $1.50 per gift. You can hardly get a bag of M&Ms for that much these days.
Luckily, I came across these little mini loaf pans at Michaels the other day. I had a coupon for 20% off my entire purchase, so I ended up getting them for $0.80 each. I’ve had chocolate and peppermint on my mind (because who doesn’t love chocolate and peppermint?), but was unable to find a good chocolate/peppermint bread recipe that wasn’t too dry. So I made this one up and it is so moist and yummy without being too sweet.
Double Chocolate & Peppermint Bread
Ingredients
- 2 cups flour
- 1/2 cup cocoa
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup oil (or butter, room temp)
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 cup milk
- 1-1/2 cups natural applesauce (no sugar added)
- 1/2 tsp peppermint extract
- Generous 1/4 cup chocolate chips
- Generous 1/4 cup Andes peppermint chips
- Preheat oven to 350. Grease 5 mini loaf pans.
- In a large ziploc bag, combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt, chocolate chips, and peppermint chips. Shake until well combined.
- In a large bowl, mix/cream oil or butter and sugar. Stire in eggs then mix in milk, applesauce and extract.
- Add dry ingredients to bowl and stire until just combined.
- Pour batter into loaf pans (about 1/2 to 2/3 full). Bake in oven for 40-45 minutes or until toothpick stuck in center of loaf comes out clean. Let cool for 10 minutes in pan, then turn onto cooling rack.
I’m so glad another holiday task is done!


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