Raisin Spice Bread

We spent a lovely afternoon playing games at a friend's house the other weekend, and they gave us generous wedges of this bread spread with cream cheese to snack on. They have the same breadmaker as us and the recipe was straight from the book, so I decided to make it too - amazingly I've never made a sweet bread in the machine! After this I'd love to try a brioche. And that doesn't have any fruit in it, so no chance of me messing up the dispenser setting, as I did for the first time making this :)

Ingredients:

• 130ml water
• 130ml milk
• 2 1/2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tsp salt
• 3 tbsp brown sugar
• 575g white bread flour
• 100g malted dark bread flour (optional, replace with white or wholemeal if you prefer)
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 2 1/2 tsp dried yeast
• 1 cup raisins

Put everything except the raisins into the breadmaker; put the raisins in the dispenser, or add at the second knead. Pop the breadmaker on 'sweet' and brush with a little sugar glaze at the end if you like.

Or, if you have no breadmaker, knead for 15 minutes, rise for 40, punch down, rise again for 30, shape however you like, rise again for 50 minutes, and then bake for 70 minutes at 115C.

They taste just like hot cross buns so you could also put the dough on, then take out, shape into small buns, rise again and bake for maybe 20 minutes to produce hot cross buns. Then the glaze is mandatory!