Sweet & Tangy Poppy Seed Bread

For the bread:
Preheat oven to 350ªF.

Combine ingredients in a large bowl and hand mix until thoroughly blended. Spoon batter into greased loaf pans.

Bake 1 hour for a 5″x9″ loaf pan, 45 minutes for a ceramic mini loaf pan, or 34-40 minutes for an aluminum mini loaf pan.

Test for doneness using a toothpick. Insert toothpick in the middle of the mini loaf. When pulling toothpick out, it should be clean or with moist crumbs. If the toothpick still has wet batter on it, put the pan back in the oven for another 3-5 minutes to finish baking. Repeat testing until toothpick comes out clean.

For the glaze:
While bread is baking, make orange glaze by combining into a small bowl. Stir well until blended. You will need to continue stirring occasionally for sugar to blend into orange juice thoroughly.

Once bread is out of oven, cool for 10 minutes. Then drizzle orange glaze over top of each loaf, allowing the glaze to permeate through the loaf while still warm and creating a sugared orange crust once cooled.

Note: If you are gift wrapping bread, make sure it feels cool/cold to the touch before packaging. Otherwise, condensation will form inside the wrapped loaf.

Makes 5 mini loaves or one 5″x9″ loaf.