Grandma Murrell's Cherry Bread

The kids and I are FINALLY back from our trip to Colorado.  If you are on our Facebook Page, then you know what crazy issues we encountered while flying back last Thursday.  I kid y'all not, I have never been so happy to set foot on land before in my life.  It feels really great to be back home :)

Even though our experience with the Airlines was horrible, our actual stay in Colorado was a good one ;)  The whole reason for the trip was to help out my wonderful sister, who was in the last few weeks of pregnancy with her third child.  Her hubby has been in Iraq for the last 9 months and she is not stationed near family, so I took it as my sisterly duty to help her out for two weeks ;)  She didn't have the baby while we were up there...and instead had her 2 days after we arrived back here in Louisiana.....

Say hello to Cameron Alicia..........

....mother and baby are doing fine ;)

My sister's mother-in-law, Mary Lee, joined us in Colorado during the last few days of our stay.  This recipe for Cherry Bread is her recipe.  My brother-in-law absolutely loves this bread, along with my nephews.  I have had the recipe stashed away in my collection for a long while and have never tried it, but that changed this past weekend.  Mary Lee was planning on making it while we were up there, but between taking care of 4 children and helping out with other household duties, she never got around to it.  So I decided to give it a whirl and make it myself when the kids and I came back this weekend.

I am very glad I did!  Now I know what all the hoopla has been about with this bread.  The maraschino cherries and cherry juice give it such a cheerful color AND gives it an outstanding cherry flavor.  I am an amaretto, cherry lovin woman...and love anything that has these flavors in it...to include this bread.  Not only that, it is super simple to make as well! Just throw the ingredients together, mix, and bake!  No chopping necessary ;)  Make a loaf of this, top each piece with some cream cheese, and serve it for breakfast ;)  Or serve it as a nice snack during the day.  Either way you choose, you definitely will not regret making it.  We <3 and miss you Mary Lee!!!  Thank you for such a great recipe!  ;)

Grandma Murrell's Cherry Bread

Ingredients:

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup cherry juice

1 and 1/2 cups flour

1 and 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 small bottle of cherries (without stems)

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2.  With an electric mixer, mix all ingredients together in a bowl. The batter will be thick but don't panic.  It's supposed to look like that ;)

3.  Grease and flour a loaf pan (I used a 9 inch one).

4.  Place batter in loaf pan and bake for one hour.