sweet bread

Pap showing me how to make sweet bread like his mother did

Sweet Bread

  • Lard
  • 2 eggs
  • ¼ cup butter
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 teaspoon vanilla
  • ¾ cup sugar
  • 2 cup self-rising flour

Heat 2 cast iron pans on the stove; add a spoonful of lard to each. While the lard is melting, break 2 eggs in a mixing bowl. Cut a stick of butter in half. Then cut the half in half-adding a half
of a half to each pan. (I think I just invented a new tongue twister)

While butter is melting add milk to eggs and mix well; add vanilla and mix well.

Once the butter is melted in the frying pans, pour most of it into the milk egg mixture and stir well. Pap told me he liked to melt his butter in the frying pan because it’s one less dish to wash.

Next add sugar to mixture and stir well. Add flour and stir till smooth.

Divide batter equally between the two pans and place them in a pre-heated 350˚oven. Bake for 20-25 minutes or till golden brown.

appalachian-sweet-bread

Sweet Bread can be frosted, but my favorite way to eat it is straight out of the pan. Pap always liked to open a can of Granny’s peaches to eat with his.

If you’ve never had sweet bread before, its very similar to a simple cake recipe. You can easily decrease or increase the sugar in the recipe to better fit your preference of sweetness.

When Pap was growing up there wasn’t many sweet treats for kids to eat. Pap had fond memories of the special times his Mother would make his family a pan of sweet bread.

Tipper

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15 Comments

  1. tipper
    what a beautiful memory of you and pap cooking. the bread sounds delicious. thank you so much for sharing..im going
    to try this…the weather is more fall like here in pa, so will be just right with soups…mmmm
    sending love and big ladybug hugs
    lynn

  2. In case the audience has changed I’ll tell this again. My mother made sweetbread. I’m not sure of the recipe but from the looks of yours it had to be something similar. Except she made it in a 9″ X 13″ cake pan so the pieces were square. I always prayed for a corner piece before I have always been a crustaholic. The top crust was not so good but if you were lucky the bottom would be. So with a corner piece I got a bottom and two sides. That to me was like a royal flush in poker. You know what a vanilla wafer tastes like, right? That’s what the crust on Mommy’s sweetbread tasted like. I never cared for the pieces in the middle. The crustless ones, Blah! But that’s not the story.
    My grandma Cora’s sister Mae married Glenn Breedlove. Many if not most of his friends and neighbors called him Sweetbread. The story goes that when he was young and went courting he would always carry a piece of sweetbread in his pocket to entice a young lovely that had caught his eye. I guess word got around of his amorous schemes so when he approached anyone who knew him would say “Here comes Sweetbread!”

  3. Nothing like a slice of warm sweet bread right out of the oven with a big glass of cold sweet milk! What a treat for us kids growing up and what wonderful memories this brought back of my own sweet mom. My cousin told me that Aunt Lydia’s house always smelled like vanilla flavoring, and I have to agree!

  4. Omgoodness, what memories this brings back, I can just hear my Daddy saying to my Mother
    “Jane, make us a little cake of sweet bread”.

  5. Tipper,
    Congratulations to Jeanette and Cheryl on winning the tickets.

    Pap really hit the spot when he showed you how to make Sweet Bread. I like Peaches with mine too, it just suits me. He was a lot like my daddy, always had an answer. The older generation was smart! Maybe it’s because they came thru the Hard Times. …Ken

  6. I wouldn’t ice this, but I MIGHT sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top while it’s still warm. BTW… I’m guessing that the spoonful of lard in each is a teaspoon and that one might be able to melt the butter in one pan and then put the lard in after the butter has gone into the mix (or am I missin something?)

  7. Another one of those thangs I’m not shore bout. I know in later years Mom used cake mix and no icing and we ate it with peaches or mixed fruit.
    Many years ago Dad got several volunteer peach trees from an old friend. A few of the trees turned out to be white peaches but most were purple and they were so sweet you didn’t really need any sugar to freeze. Of course Mom always added a little sugar anyhow. This was Dad’s favorite dessert. No icing cake and purple peaches.

  8. Simple, plain and sweet. What more could one ask? I wouldn’t mind being described that way, provided ‘simple’ didn’t take the wrong meaning.

    Congratulations to Jeanette and Cheryl. Have a wonderful time making priceless memories.

  9. Mom made this a lot, and Dad loved it. She cooked mostly the way her own mother did, so I suppose I grew up with the diet of the early 1900’s. There were a lot of carbs, but very little processed food.

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