Strawberry Bread

I cannot wait until strawberry season.  Wanna know why?  Because I wanna use fresh strawberries for this yummy bread.  I had some leftover strawberries in the fridge, so I decided to make a sweet bread with them.  And it turned out amazing!!  It barely lasted a day in my house.  I can't even imagine how much more amazing it would be with freshly picked strawberries.  It's a sweet, dense, very moist cake-ish bread.  I guess you could call it a coffee cake.  This is best served all room temperature, in my opinion, with coffee.  Or with some cream cheese frosting on it...Mmm..this makes it taste like strawberry cheesecake!  It's also very good warm with ice cream and/or whipped cream.

Yield: 1 loaf

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups fresh, sliced strawberries
• 1.5 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup white sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease 1 loaf pan.
2. Slice or dice strawberries, and place in medium-sized bowl. Sprinkle lightly with sugar, and set aside while preparing bread mixture.
3. Combine flour, sugar, cinnamon, salt and baking soda in large bowl: mix well. Blend oil and eggs into strawberries. Add strawberry mixture to flour mixture, blending until dry ingredients are just moistened. Stir in pecans. Divide batter into pans.
4. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, or until tester inserted comes out clean. Let cool in pans on wire rack for 10 minutes. Turn loaves out, and cool completely.