I regularly bake quick breads with whichever fruit is in season, but I have yet to come across a recipe for a peach one.  Not that I have ever really set out to look for one, but a couple of weeks ago I had some perfectly ripe peaches sitting around, and I didn’t want to bake a whole cake, and I didn’t have enough to bake a pie, so I thought that I might try a peach quick bread.  Instead of surfing the web for a new recipe I decided to clobber one together using a low-fat vanilla pound cake recipe, that I love, and my usual blueberry quick bread recipe as a template.  Throw in some peaches, jazz it up with a little crumb topping, and I was in business.  I think I added too much fruit to this batch, since the bread had a few too many pockets of moisture, but the flavors were great, and I ended up with a fairly satisfying peach quick bread.  In the recipe below I reduced my amount of peaches from 3 large peaches to 2 large peaches to hopefully take care of the moisture problem, but I’ll still have to give it another go to see how it does.  You may think that late September, early October, is an odd time to be writing about peaches, but local peaches in Vermont are only available for a small window of time in late, late, summer, and peaches are one of those fruits that gets most of its flavor from ripening on the tree, you can tell when a peach was picked green and shipped in from elsewhere.

Recipe makes 1 loaf. 

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup Butter
• 3 tbsp Canola Oil
• 3/4 cup Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 1 cup Vanilla Yogurt
• 2 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• zest from 1 Lemon
• 2 1/4 cup Flour
• 1 1/4 tsp Baking Powder
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 2-3 Peaches cubed

Crumb Topping

• 1/2 cup Flour
• 1/4 cup Brown Sugar
• 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 1/4 cup cubed Butter

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF (~177 C).
2. Cream together the butter, canola oil, and sugar.
3. Add the eggs. Beat until well blended and smooth.
4. Add in the vanilla yogurt, vanilla extract, and grated lemon zest.
5. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
6. Add in the dry ingredients. Mix until fully combined.
7. Fold in the peaches.
8. Pour into greased loaf pan.
9. Make the crumb topping by cutting the butter into the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt until small clumps start to form.
10. Sprinkle crumb topping evenly over the peach batter.
11. Bake for 50 – 60 minutes.