Guava quick bread with macadamia nuts & whole wheat pastry flour

Last Updated on November 6, 2023 by Aaron von Frank

This guava quick bread has an exotic, tropical flavor thanks to guava fruit puree, cardamom, and nutmeg. It’s also made with organic whole wheat PASTRY flour rather than refined/white flour. Read on to find out how to make your own! 

Guava quick bread with macadamia nuts – a delicious recipe you can make from any variety of guava!

Ingredients you’ll need to make guava quick bread:

• 1 ¼ cups unsweetened guava puree (see notes about making guava puree below)
• 1 cup organic cane sugar
• ½ cup butter, melted
• 2 duck eggs or 2 jumbo chicken eggs
• 3 tablespoons whole organic Greek yogurt
• 2 cups (406 grams) whole wheat organic PASTRY flour (using regular whole wheat flour won’t work nearly as well)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon ground cardamom
• ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup macadamia nuts, halved

Removing seeds and making guava puree from fresh guavas

‘Ruby Supreme’ guavas from our potted guava trees. Here you can see the small but very hard seeds inside a guava fruit. We’ll show you how to remove the seeds below.

You can use any type of true guava (Psidium guajava) to make this recipe. We grow two varieties of guavas: ‘Peruvian white’ and ‘Ruby supreme’, and we use the fruit interchangeably. The flavors are very similar, but ‘Ruby supreme’ is pink-fleshed, whereas most guavas have white flesh. 

(Related: How to grow guavas in pots in non-tropical zones)

Unfortunately, all guava varieties are loaded with small rock-hard seeds inside. The seeds do not soften after being cooked.

Thus, to use guava fruit in recipes like this guava quick bread, you have to turn it into a puree and remove the seeds. 

Here’s how to process and remove guava seeds: 

Step 1: Clean then cut guava fruit into chunks.

Use very ripe, slightly softened guava fruit to get the most flavorful results. The variety pictured is Ruby Supreme, which is pink. Most guava fruit is white.

Step 2: Put guava chunks into pot on your stovetop with water (to prevent scalding) at a ratio of 4:1 fruit to water. Example: 4 cups fruit and 1 cup water.

Step 3: Place pot over medium heat and cook for 15 minutes. Stir occasionally to make sure fruit is not sticking to bottom of pot.

Step 4: After 15 minutes, puree fruit with an immersion blender or food processor just long enough for fruit to be pulverized. This will not pulverize the seeds, especially if you use the correct blade attachment on your immersion blender, as shown below:

The blade attachment on an immersion blender will quickly puree cooked guava pulp without pulverizing the hard seeds.

Finished guava puree ready to be strained to remove seeds.

Step 5: Strain out seeds with a chinois strainer and chinois pestle (they usually come together). Alternative to chinois strainer: use a pasta strainer and a silicone/soft spatula.

A chinois strainer is very handy kitchen tool if you do a lot of cooking with foraged and home-grown foods that need to have their seeds removed.

If you start with 4 cups of fruit chunks and 1 cup of water, you should end up with about 3.5 cups of puree if you follow these instructions. 

Storage: If you’re not using your guava puree immediately, store it in an airtight container in your fridge. It will last for about a week. 

Two other recipe tips:

1. Use whole wheat PASTRY flour not regular whole wheat flour

Do not use regular whole wheat flour, otherwise your quick bread will turn out too heavy/dense. Instead, use organic whole wheat PASTRY flour which is much more finely milled. 

2. How to cut and add your macadamia nuts

Macadamia nuts are round and quite large. Their round shape and heaviness makes them sink in the dough, in which case most of the nuts could end up in the bottom of the bread. 

To help the nuts more evenly distribute in the bread, do two things:

1. Cut the macadamia nuts in half to make them lighter and not round. (You’ll also want to do this if you have younger kids like we do for whom whole macadamia nuts might be a choking hazard.) Then, only mix about 75% of the halved nuts into the wet batter. 
2. When pouring the wet batter into the buttered loaf pan, only add about 75% of your batter. Then sprinkle the remaining macadamia nuts on the surface of the batter before covering them with the remainder of the batter.  

Left: The remaining macadamia nuts are sprinkled on top of the batter that has been added to the loaf pan. Center: Remaining batter added on top of macadamia nuts, then smoothed out with a spatula. Right: Guava quick bread fresh out of the oven and ready to cool!

With these tips out of the way, now you’re ready to start baking! 

Print

Guava quick bread with macadamia nuts

Course: Breakfast, brunch

Cuisine: American

Keyword: guava bread, guava breakfast bread, guava quick bread

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Servings: 8

Author: Aaron von Frank

A simple delicious quick bread made with guava fruit puree, macadamia nuts, and organic whole wheat pastry flour. Cardamon and nutmeg round out the flavors, giving this quick bread an exotic, tropical flavor!

Ingredients

Wet ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups unsweetened guava puree (see notes and photos in article to make guava puree)
• 1 cup organic cane sugar
• 1/2 cup unsalted grass-fed butter, melted (plus more to grease loaf pan)
• 2 duck eggs (or 2 JUMBO chicken eggs) (duck eggs are much larger than regular chicken eggs)
• 3 tbsp whole organic Greek yogurt

Dry ingredients

• 2 cups (406 grams) whole wheat organic PASTRY flour if not weighing flour with a scale, use the "spoon and sweep" method with your measuring cups
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp cardamom powder
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp salt

Nuts

• 1/2 cup macadamia nuts, halved

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Generously butter 9″ x 5″ glass loaf pan. 

2. Stir melted butter and sugar together in large bowl. Add other wet ingredients to bowl and mix together.

   In another bowl, mix together dry ingredients (don't add macadamia nuts yet). Pour dry ingredients into wet ingredients and mix together thoroughly. Then mix in about 75% of the halved macadamia nuts. Pour 75% of the batter into loaf pan. Evenly sprinkle remaining macadamia nuts on top, then add the rest of the batter. This helps get a more even distribution of nuts towards the top of the bread. (See pictures and notes in article if this sounds confusing.)

3. Bake bread on middle oven rack for about 75-80 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Every oven bakes a little differently and the type of pan you use may also make your bread bake for less or more time. (We use a glass loaf pan.)

   Remove bread from oven and let cool on cooling rack in pan for ~10-15 minutes. Then run butter knife around outer edges before turning the pan upside down to remove bread. Let bread cool on rack. Don’t cut until bread has cooled to close to room temp.

   Store in fridge for up to 1 week. Our favorite way to reheat is to cut individual slices, then reheat them in a cast iron skillet with a little butter.

Let us know how your guava quick bread turns out in the comments below and please drop a recipe rating while you’re there!

KIGI,

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