Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas...or whatever holiday you might be celebrating this time of year! I'm Katrina Markham, and this is my husband Matthias and our teenage daughter Kara...the light of our lives. We have just moved into this special house in a new subdivision of "A Micro Christmas," which can be found at the Neighborly Sims forum (http://www.flyingacres.com/NeighborlySims/FORUM-SMF/index.php?board=238.0). All the houses in this neighborhood are quite tiny, but this one is more than adequate for our needs--or it will be, once it gets finished. The construction crew is working on that, even now.

Earlier today (from my new kitchen) I shared some of my special Bishop's Bread with them, and they liked it so much, they asked me to share the recipe with you. This lovely sweetbread looks somewhat like fruitcake, but though they share a few attributes, it is really quite different. This special treat is very gooey, chewey, and yummy. It's long been Matt's and Kara's favorite holiday sweet.

My Bishop's Bread recipe has been around in our family since the early 1960s. I think it came out of a magazine my mom got before Christmas one of those years. Since then, it's been written into several family and church cookbooks. See? Here's one of them. I've been looking up several holiday recipes in this book, to share with you. This is the first one. I think I'll get Kara to write down the ingredients we'll need for the Bishop's Bread.

Ready, Kara? We need 1-1/2 cups sifted flour, 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder (not soda), 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 cup chocolate chips (your favorite type), 2 cups chopped nuts (whichever type you prefer, but not salted ones), 1 cup halved maraschino cherries (red, green, or a mixture of both), 1 cup finely-snipped dates (or raisins, or dried cranberries), 3 eggs, and 1 cup sugar. Have you noticed? There's no fat in this recipe...lots of sugary, sweet stuff, but no fat. Got all that, Kara?

Oh, good! not only did she get it written down, but before I could get up and go to the fridge myself, she quickly went and put everything on the counter for me. What a good girl! Of course, she knows that the sooner I get started, the sooner she and her dad can start eating it up!

Before I started mixing things in this big bowl, I turned on my brand new oven to 325 degrees Farenheit, then I greased a 10" x 5" x 3" loaf pan very well (sometimes I use 4 or 5 tiny loaf pans, instead). The original recipe says to line the pan with waxed paper, but if you have a non-stick pan, you really don't need to. What type of grease do I usually use? Well...it varies, depending on what I have on hand. Probably the easiest is a spray-on type that won't scorch around the edges, as this recipe has to bake for quite a while after it's all mixed.

Once the oven and the pan were ready, I broke the eggs into a bowl, and beat them with a wire whip just long enough to break them down somewhat. Then I added in the sugar, and whipped the eggs and sugar together until the mix was a bit frothy and fairly well blended.

After the egg mixture was ready, I set it aside and got out another big bowl, into which I placed my sifted flour, baking powder, and salt, stirring them all together. Then I added my chocolate chips, nuts, cherries (yum), and my dates to the flour mixture bowl. Here I am mixing all these around just enough to coat all of the crunchy, yummy stuff with all of the flour mixture.

Then I poured the egg-and-sugar mixture over the top of the coated yummies, and "folded" it all together just until everything was moistened. (Folding means to gently pull the egg mixture down into the dry mixture, over and over, until it's all blended fairly well...you don't have to be really picky about it.)

I poured my resulting mixture into my greased loaf pan (remember...sometimes I use several smaller pans)...

...and placed the Bishop's Bread into the oven, where it had to bake for about 1-1/2 hours. Yes...I know...that's a long time. I usually check the loaf by sticking a toothpick or thin knife into the middle of the loaf (but not through any chocolate chips, if I can help it) after an hour has passed. If the toothpick comes out clean, the loaf is done. If any uncooked dough clings to the toothpick, the loaf needs to cook a while longer.

MMM!!! This sure smells good! Now, normally, the Bishop's Bread is supposed to cool thoroughly, get wrapped in foil or plastic wrap, and refrigerated for a couple of days, before anyone eats it, but this lot has been made specially for Matt and Kara, so...

...I carefully waved some of the yummy-smelling steam over Matt's way.

"Oh, Katrina!" he exclaimed. "That smells SO good!!!"

Then he started kissing my hand...what a THRILL...even if it was all about the Bishop's Bread...not me!!!

As I turned to cut the loaf into slices, Matt called Kara over. "Hurry, Kara...I'm hungry enough to eat the whole thing if you don't come and get yours pretty soon!" he joked...well...I THINK it was a joke!

Before long, we were all enjoying our special Bishop's Bread treat. We may all have to go and work out on the treadmill, if we don't want to have to buy new clothes, but...who cares? It's the holidays!

So...here's wishing you all a heartfelt HAPPY HOLIDAYS, with lots of special treats...from our house...

...which is now completed and decorated for Christmas, by the way...to yours.

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Family Comfort--the Markham's tiny house--with the family occupying it--can be downloaded at the Neighborly Sims Forum, at:

http://www.flyingacres.com/NeighborlySims/FORUM-SMF/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;id=995