How to return Loader object as Class

I have to implement a menu with icons using actionscript only. I create a data provider from XML and set

menu = Menu.createMenu(null, dataArray, true)开发者_如何学JAVA;
menu.iconFunction = iconFunction;

Till here everything is fine and my menu is presented, but only with labels. I create iconFunction as following:

private function iconFunction(item:Object):Class
{
   var st:Loader = new Loader();
   st.load(new URLRequest(item.icon));
   return ?;
}

and here's my question: how do I return my loader object as Class? I'm googling this for hours and cannot find something relevant.

Thanks a lot!

You can use Ben Stucki's solution as a base.

Will this example help?

package {

import flash.display.Sprite;
import flash.utils.ByteArray;
import flash.display.Loader;
import flash.net.URLLoader;
import flash.net.URLRequest;
import flash.net.URLLoaderDataFormat;
import flash.geom.Rectangle;
import flash.events.Event;

public class Main extends Sprite {

    private var urlLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();

    public function Main() {
        urlLoader.dataFormat = URLLoaderDataFormat.BINARY;
        urlLoader.load(new URLRequest("http://server.com/image.jpg"));

       urlLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, completeHandler);
   }

   private function completeHandler(event:Event):void {
       var loader:Loader = new Loader();
       loader.loadBytes(urlLoader.data);
       addChild(loader);
   }
}

}