Cherry Almond Bread
Cherry almond bread is fruity, slightly sweet and has a great crust. This homemade bread is great any time, but especially nice for special meals or holidays.
Last Updated February 11, 2022 – Originally Posted February 10, 2010
Cherry almond bread is fruity, slightly sweet and has a crispy crust. The recipe gets its name from two special ingredients, cherry preserves and almond extract. The butter makes the bread rich and delicious.
This homemade bread is great any time, but especially nice for special meals or holidays. For example, it makes a lovely breakfast treat for Valentine’s Day.
Should You Melt the Butter?
Many recipes call for melted or softened butter. That’s to help the butter mix with the rest of the ingredients.
Some bread machines, including my Zojirushi, have a preheat cycle that melts the butter for you. If your machine has that cycle then you do not need to melt the butter. Follow the instructions that came with your bread machine for how to add cubed butter. As you can see from the below photo, I cut the butter into four chunks and placed it at each corner of the bread pan.
Making Cherry Almond Bread
This makes a two-pound loaf of bread. Use the basic setting with the light crust option.
Follow the instructions that came with your bread machine in terms of which ingredients to put in the machine first. With my Zo, I add the liquids first.
Because preserves can be difficult to measure, I started by adding 1/2 cup of water into a 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup. Then I scooped in the preserves until the level in the cup reached the 1-cup mark.
I also added the egg to the measuring cup and gave everything a good stir. I went through the same process with my apricot bread recipe and here’s how it looked when I made that.
Note that this level is above the 1-cup mark because of the egg, as well as my spoon.
Continue adding ingredients to the bread pan.
Check the dough after five or ten minutes of kneading. This is especially important with this recipe because different preserves have different consistencies. Open the lid of the bread machine and see how the dough is doing. It should be a smooth-ish, round ball.
If the dough is too dry add liquid a teaspoon at a time until it looks right. If it looks too wet, add flour a tablespoon at a time until it looks right.
Here’s how mine looked after adding two tablespoons of water.
Note that the loaf of bread won’t be as large as some other loaves. It’ll come out a little small as compared with other two-pound loaves.
Do you love cherries? If so, check out this recipe for Cherry Bread using dried cherries.
Cherry Almond Bread – Bread Machine Recipe
This makes a two-pound loaf. Use the white bread or basic setting with the crust set to light.
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup cherry preserves
1/4 cup butter
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
3 1/2 cups bread flour
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
See below for metric measurements, as well as nutrition information, for this bread machine cherry almond bread recipe.
Cherry Almond Bread
Recommended Equipment
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup (118.29 ml) water
- 1/2 cup (170 g) cherry preserves
- 1/4 cup (56.75 g) butter
- 1 egg beaten
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
- 3 1/2 cups (437.5 g) bread flour
- 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
Instructions
- This makes a two-pound loaf of bread. Use the basic setting with light crust.
- Follow the instructions that came with your bread machine in terms of which ingredients to put in the machine first.
- Check the dough after five or ten minutes of kneading. This is especially important with this recipe because different preserves have different consistencies. Open the lid of the bread machine and see how the dough is doing. It should be a smooth-ish, round ball. If the dough is too dry add liquid a teaspoon at a time until it looks right. If it looks too wet, add flour a tablespoon at a time until it looks right.
Notes
Nutrition
All information presented within this site is intended for informational purposes only. I am not a certified nutritionist and any nutritional information on breadmachinediva.com should only be used as a general guideline. This information is provided as a courtesy and there is no guarantee that the information will be completely accurate. I try to provide accurate information to the best of my ability; however these figures should still be considered estimates.
Can I use maraschino cherries?
I haven’t tried adding maraschino cherries, but they might make a good addition. I’d try half a cup of chopped, drained cherries.
If you were thinking of replacing the cherry preservers with maraschino cherries, that would not work. The bread needs the sugar and liquid in the preserves.
Could you use fresh cherries?
I’m sorry, that won’t work. The cherries would be too hard because they haven’t been cooked. Also the preserves provide some needed sugar.
I was able to use fresh sour cherries that were previously frozen and thawed. (I have this huge cherry tree in my yard in which I’m always looking for recipes to use them in.) Anyway, what I did was make them into my own cherry “preserve” by subbing a cherry pie filling recipe instead since cherries get cooked that way. The end result was bread that turned out beautifully! To make the cherry “preserve” (for those who might want to try it) I used 4 cups of frozen cherries, thawed (do not drain) plus 1/2 cup water. Cook for 10 minutes. In the meantime, in a separate bowl stir together 1 and 1/4 cups sugar and 3 tablespoons tapioca (I used Kraft Minute Tapioca) and then add to cherry mixture until thickened (about 15 to 20 minutes) on medium heat. Remove from heat and add 1/2 tsp. cinnamon and 1 tsp. almond extract. Cool. This recipe makes enough “preserve” for 5 bread loaves or one cherry pie. (I froze rest in 4 small containers for later.) Then follow the rest of recipe as stated above except I used the regular bread setting and medium crust, not light. My bread turned out so good and I couldn’t have been happier!!! Thank you for a great recipe that only needed a slight tweaking.👍
Thank you so much for the cherry preserve recipe! I love that!
I made this and there wasn’t nearly enough cherry for me. In fact although the half cup of preserves had many whole cherries the mixer did quite well mixing them into nothing. I don’t think there was even a hint of cherry flavor. But I have plenty of preserves to put on top.
I’m so sorry it didn’t work out. If you ever try the recipe again, I wonder if putting the preserves in at the add beep would help.
Thank you Marsha; I am also going to try this with cranberry preserves (and probably orange extract instead of almond), which I thought might make good turkey sandwiches.
Yum! That sounds great! Let me know how it turns out.