Even though its roots are in England, this bread has a long history in New York City where people used to purchase a date nut bread sandwich for 10 cents along with a 5 cent cup of coffee according to this Politico article. The article talks about the history behind this bread and how it came to be so popular. We really enjoy date nut bread and have been buying it from the local grocery store until we found out they are no longer carrying it. That’s when we had to do a little digging online and came across this interesting Politico article and tons of ‘made from scratch’ recipes. We decided on this one and it came out just as delicious, if not better, than the store bought one. The idea of spreading on a lightly sweetened cream cheese and topping it with fruit sounds so delicious. We can see this recipe being a great breakfast, an amazing accompaniment to brunch, and even a delectable dessert!

Ingredients

• 1 loaf date nut bread (can buy prepackaged or make your own from scratch)
  • We used this recipe here to make the bread from scratch —> date nut bread recipe

Cream Cheese Spread

• 4 ounces cream cheese
• juice from half a lime
• 1 tablespoon powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon water

Fruit for the topping

• approx. 1 peach
• approx. 1 kiwi
• approx. 2-3 strawberries
• approx. 1 tablespoon blueberries

Method of Preparation 

1. If using a prepackaged bread, slice the loaf into squares about 2″ x 2″. Depending on the package size, you may need to use the whole loaf instead of half. [Skip to step 4]
2. If following the recipe listed above to make your date nut bread from scratch, here are a few things we changed to the method.
   • We used an immersion blender after mixing the dates, baking soda, butter, and hot water to achieve a thicker consistency of the wet ingredients.
   • We didn’t have cans to bake them in (as the link suggests) so we used a regular loaf pan, 8 1/2″ x 4 1/2″.
   • This recipe made 2 loaves of bread. We wrapped one in plastic, placed into a freezer bag, labeled it with the date, and put it in the freezer to enjoy at a later time.
3. Let bread cool completely, and cut half of the loaf into squares about 2″ x 2″. To make perfect squares, you can level the top of the bread. Place what you cut off into a plastic bag and save for later.
4. Place the cream cheese, lime juice, powdered sugar, and water into a bowl and beat for about 1 minute using a hand-mixer. Or you can use a whisk.
5. Slice the fruit very thin – about 1/8″ thick.
6. Spread about 1-2 teaspoons of the cream cheese mixture on each square and arrange the sliced fruit on top. You can be as creative as you’d like with the fruit topping.

Enjoy!

If you’re interested, check out this post from Politico on the history of the date-nut bread.