Cranberry Orange Bread

I know that cranberry and orange are more of a Christmas/holiday flavor combination, but what do you do when you have the majority of a bag of cranberries left from last month’s Daring Baker’s challenge? I didn’t want them to go to waste, but my husband doesn’t like cranberries, so I had to make something that I could easily take to work unless I wanted to eat it all myself! I chose this quick bread since I also had a box of oranges that we were making our way through.

This bread came together easily and quickly. My one hint when making a quick bread is to not use your stand mixer. Sure, it’s easier, but a bread like this will be more tender the less you mix it, and I don’t know about you, but I tend to like to mix more in my stand mixer! The original recipe called for walnuts, but I substituted pecans because that is what I had.

The morning after I made this, I was wrapping it up to take to work, but decided to ask my cranberry-hating-husband if he wanted me to at least leave him a slice. He un-enthusiastically said yes, so I kept one slice aside and brought the rest to work. But at work it was left virtually untouched. Yes – I work with a bunch of nut haters, and most would not even take a second look at it since it had nuts in it. I don’t understand some people!! At the end of the day, half of the loaf was still there (note to self – don’t even bring it to work if it has nuts!!) so I wrapped it up and took it home. I really liked it, so I figured I would finish it off myself. When I got home, my husband commented that he really liked the bread!! This bread had converted a cranberry hater!!
Cranberry Orange Bread
from The Great Big Baking Book

Makes 1 loaf

2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
grated rind of 1 large orange
2/3 cup fresh orange juice
2 eggs, lightly beaten
6 tablespoons butter, melted
1 1/4 cups fresh cranberries
1/2 cup nuts, chopped

Preheat the oven to 350F. Line the bottom and sides of a 9×5 loaf pan with wax paper or parchment paper and grease.

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Stir in the orange rind. Make a well in the center and add the orange juice, eggs and melted butter. Stir from the center until the ingredients are blended. DO NOT OVERMIX. Add the cranberries and nuts and stir until blended.

Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and bake until a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean – about 45-50 minutes.

Let the bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

0 Flares Twitter 0 Tweet Facebook 0 Pin It Share 0 Google+ 0 Email -- Email to a friend 0 Flares ×