Nut Bread

I first found this recipe as a freshman in college - I think it was in one of my roommates' cookbooks. It's just a good, basic sweet bread, kind of like banana bread without the bananas. This time around I changed it a bit to make it a little more healthy - substituting wheat flour for part of the white flour, using applesauce for some of the oil, and decreasing the nuts to reduce the calories.

Nut Bread
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups sugar
2 tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 beaten eggs
2 cups milk
1/2 cup cooking oil
1/2 cup applesauce
1 1/4 cup nuts (I've also used a fruit and nut trail mix with delicious results!)

Preheat oven to 350. Grease bottoms and 1/2 inch up sides of two 8x4x2-inch loaf pans; set aside.

In large bowl stir together flours, sugar, baking powder and salt. Make a well in center of flour mixture; set aside.

In medium bowl combine eggs, milk, oil, and applesauce. Add egg mixture all at once to flour mixture. Stir just until moistened. Fold in nuts or trail mix. Spoon batter evenly into prepared pans.
Bake at 350 for 50-55 minutes or until wooden toothpick inserted near center comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pans. Cool completely on wire rack. Wrap and store overnight before slicing (guilty confession - sure, one loaf gets wrapped and stored, but we pretty much cut into the other one as soon as it's cool!)

We used this bread to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches today for lunch. Yum!