Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1 pinch ground cloves
1 generous pinch fresh ground nutmeg
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) melted unsalted butter
1 1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 cup finely diced apples
1 cup pomegranate arils
1. Mix all of the dry ingredients. Stamp the mixture with a whisk to break apart any brown sugar clumps.
2. Melt the butter by placing it in a microwave-safe ramekin and microwaving it for about 30-40 seconds. Mix the melted butter with the applesauce to cool it down. Beat the eggs and milk together. Beat the applesauce/butter mixture into the egg/milk mixture.
3. Make a well in the dry ingredients. Pour the wet mixture, the apples and the pomegranate arils into the dry ingredients and stir until just blended. Once all of the dry ingredients are wet, stop mixing, even if there are a few clumps left. If you overmix the dough, the bread will come out tough.
4. Pour mixture into two 9×5 bread tins that have either been greased with butter or sprayed with cooking spray. Bake at 350˚F for 50 minutes or until edges are lightly browned and bread is springy to the touch.
5. Cool on a rack for 10 minutes before removing from the pan.
Not sure how to harvest the arils from inside the pomegranate? Click on my post How to Get the Arils Out of Pomegranate. You can get about 1 cup of arils from one large pomegranate.
Freshly grated nutmeg is the best, but you can use ground nutmeg from the store too.
When you bake cookies, you beat the sugar in with the butter and the eggs, but for this recipe, sugar is a dry ingredient.
Even though there are a few clumps, this batter is ready to pour into two greased baking tins.
Let both loaves cool on a drying rack before removing from tin.
