Fruit Bread: Helen’s Famous Canadian Holiday Fruit Bread (2024)

Fruit Bread: A Traditional Family Christmas Morning Favourite

This Christmas, Ragan asked mom to remember to make her famous Holiday Fruit Bread. As our family ages, we tend to prepare less of the staples we all know and love as we just cannot eat them all. Yes! It has been a few years since this Christmas Tradition has graced our table. Now, was definitely the time.

However, mom neglected to get the message: no cinnamon buns this year. She made those, too! Whatever comes from mom’s kitchen is delicious and timeless. This fruit loaf is at its best, however, when toasted. We all heartily agree with that. Golden brown, slathered with butter and every bite a mixture of savoury yeasty goodness, salty butter-rich crunch with sweet chewy bobbles of fruity jewels bursting of bright fruit coupled with sticky sweetness. Does it get any better?

It just does not. The key to Helen’s Famous Canadian Holiday Fruit Bread is using the “Fancy” glazed fruit mixture that provides large morsels of fruit instead of the finer chopped blend available at most grocery stores.

Fruit Bread: Mis and Mom en Place

Ready to go, as always, my mom Helen never leaves the house without her hair done, her lipstick and earrings in place and her perfume on.

Above, the ingredients for the dough and the filling. The raisins, fancy glazed fruit mixture and pine nuts are added after the dough has proofed.

Fruit Bread: Making the Dough with Helen

Baking beside my mom has enabled me to capture so many of our traditional family recipes here and to translate most of them to make in the Thermomix machine. I will be doing that with her, today.

She proofs her yeast and then adds it to the bowl of her mixer.

Mom carefully adds sugar, butter, salt, rind and 2 cups flour into her mixing bowl with the yeast mixture, above, and below left is what the dough looks like once combined.

She then added more flour and eggs and continued to whisk as above, right.

Finally, after stirring in the remaining flour, the dough has clumped together and formed a softball. She is ready to knead it.

Fruit Bread: Kneading the Dough with Helen

Placing her dough on a lightly floured work surface; she then kneadsvigorously for 8-15 minutes until the dough pops and is elastic. Kneading is daunting and does require skill and practice. However, the resulting loaves are so worth the effort!

Did I say “lightly floured workbench”? Yes, I did! That is definitely my advice, but my mom makes her bread “old school”. I have managed to rewrite her recipe to include all this bench flour (maybe not all), but as much as necessary, to create her famous recipe.

Granted. It is a very sticky dough. Even when I translated the recipe to make in the Thermomix machine, I did honour mom’s process and recipe. The dough is very sticky which is part of the success of its gorgeous flavour and texture.

Like riding a bike, mom knows what to do with her dough. She is not afraid. Her confidence is inspiring as I watch her create a vibrant, elastic dough ready to proof.

See? Now, into a well-floured bowl with a damp cloth to cover and it will take a couple of hours to double in size.

Fruit Bread: Proofing the Dough with Helen

It is so gratifying to get that little dough ball sitting proudly in its proofing bowl.

And two hours later, almost… look at that rise!

Fruit Bread: Making and Kneading the Dough in the Thermomix Machine

When making the dough in the Thermomix machine, or even without it, if you use your yeast often and store it in the fridge, you do not need to proof it. Proofing yeast used to be important to be sure it was alive as we only made bread on holidays. If you make bread often, no need to proof. You know your yeast is alive and well.

So, I weighed the items into the Thermomix mixing bowl, not exactly in the same order mom did hers in, but in a similar fashion.

Adding the flour until the dough clumped and then kneaded mine in the machine. No sweating for moi.

Clearly, the dough is elastic and ready to proof.

So gorgeous!

However, it is mightly sticky, remember? I put the bowl back on the base and whisked it on high to remove the sticky dough from the blade, far left. Then, removed the blade and rolled out the rest of the bits before washing, as best I could.

Fruit Bread: Rolling the Dough and Incorporating the Filling

I did not knead my sticky dough further by hand. I simply put it in a bowl, just like mom, and proofed it.

Gorgeous looking dough, too!

Time to rock and roll! Let’s get this famous holiday citrus scented loaf filled with fruit!

This recipe makes two loaves. You can divide the dough and fillings in half and do each separately, or do as we did: all together. Roll out one great rectangle.

Mix the filling ingredients in a bowl to combine well.

Ragan found the Fancy or Deluxe glazed fruit mixture at Bulk Barn.

Mom has the entire filling mixture spread evenly over the rectangle of dough.

She folded the sides over to the middle with the fruit and then the ends over to the middle, as well.

Then rolled both ends into the middle and kneaded the filled dough to fully encase the fruit.

I did mine a little differently. I folded the dough with the fruit over to cover 1/3 of the rectangle lengthwise, then pulled the bottom up and over to create a loaf-like cylinder.

I then rolled it into a spiral from one end to the other.

Fruit Bread: Forming the Loaves

I did what mom did, at this point. I simply flattened my spiral to encase all of the fruit.

Now, how many loaves will we make? I made one recipe and she made another, so between us, we had enough dough for 4 full loaves. However, we had only 2 loaf pans. One regular sized and a pull-man style loaf pan that is more narrow and longer. Then I had small individual pans (dough from one loaf makes 3-4 of these) and I also had a flower-shaped loaf pan in a tin. Mom wanted to give some away and I just wanted a couple of loaves for the holidays.

Don’t panic. It looks daunting once you cut through the dough to make two loaves, but it really isn’t. I rolled it, as above, right, to contain the filling, and placed it in a pan, seam sides down. You will see the texture and appearance once baked, is lovely.

Mom did the same with hers. I was making two larger loaves and she was making the four small ones as well as the flower loaf.

My dough, above, set to proof.

We filled the flower loaf pan perfectly, about 2/3rds full. Put the end on, and let it proof with the others.

Mom would have 4 lovely little individual loaves to gift and a flower loaf to slice for a fancy little tea sometime in the new year.

Fruit Bread: Proofing Formed Loaves

An hour or so later, the dough is lovely and puffy. Ready to go into the oven.

Fruit Bread: Baking the Bread

Look at that! Look at that! You can see, as you follow this day with us that the daylight faded and the baked loaves are out of the oven after dusk. It is December, and night falls here at around 5 pm so it doesn’t take as long as it might seem it does.

The flower loaf is my favourite but I love them all.

Fruit Bread: Serving the Bread

Look at this proud homemade loaf studded with jewelled fruit and oozing deliciousness. I cannot wait to slice into it.

Every year, I am surprised. Mom tweaked this recipe over 50 years ago and doubled the fruit at that time. Over the years, with the addition of the fancy fruit which presents each fruit piece in a much larger portion, it is more difficult to contain the filling within the dough. But that is part of the charm. It is a Holiday Fruit Loaf stuffed to the brim with fruit and though that is so very true when slicing each loaf, it always appears that more fruit could easily be added.I challenge you to add more fruit to this dough. Send me a photo if you succeed.

I always wish I could see a few more pieces within each slice, but when I eat it, I am not wishing for more of the fruit.

The balance of dough to fruit upon the palate is perfect. And a toasted slice of Helen’s Famous Canadian Holiday Fruit Bread truly is sublime. You must make this recipe if you have never made a homemade fruit loaf. The challenge can be on if you like. I have never had one better.