#header-inner {background-position: center !important; width: 100% !important;}

Friday, January 8, 2010

Cranberry Orange Nut Bread


Last year sometime, I made two loaves of some cranberry nut bread with orange zest and gave one to Ryan's brother Justin and kept the other for us. Ryan and Justin loved the bread and couldn't stop raving about the zestiness of the orange (?!) in there as well as the general flavor overall. Of course I have NO idea what recipe I used (should've had a blog then!), and in my attempts to recreate the bread since then, I have always, in their opinion, come up short. I think they've set some unrealistically high expectations and that their memory of this bread is skewed, but I've attempted to recreate it to their satisfaction once again.

I'm pretty sure this recipe, originally from Taste of Home Oct/Nov 2009, is very similar to the bread I made last year. I purposefully didn't make any substitutions (whole wheat flour, etc) in the hopes that it would turn out delicious. I didn't make the strudel or the glaze for this bread, because my original bread did not include it. I've snuck a few bites and I think it's pretty darn good, regardless of what the boys think :)

Cranberry Orange Nut Bread
found on Cristine Cooks, originally from Taste of Home
**I doubled the below recipe to make 2 loaves

Ingredients:
-2 cups flours
-3/4 cup sugar
-1 1/2 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp salt
-1/2 tsp baking soda
-1/4 cup cold butter
-1 egg
-3/4 cup orange juice
-2 tsp grated orange peel (I used the entire orange peel of one orange--for the double batter.)
-1 cup chopped fresh or frozen cranberries
-1/2 cup chopped pecans (my addition)

Directions:
1. In a mixing bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda.
2. Cut in cold butter until crumbly.
3. In a small bowl, mix the egg, orange juice, and grated orange peel.
4. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, just until moistened.
5. Fold in cranberries and nuts.
6. Pour batter into a greased loaf pan. Bake at 350F for 55-65 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
7. Cool for 10 minutes before cutting around edges and removing from pan.