Cranberry-Orange Bread! (Quickbread, really..)

First, I must apologize for my lack of activity here on the Barmy blog. I've had a few things on my mind lately and this has caused a bit of slacking in the photo-taking-food-writing area of my life. I do hope I will be back more frequently.

Cranberry bread is another of my favorite seasonal baked goods. I love the way that bright tart cranberries and lovely acidic oranges compliment each other. My mom always made loaves of Cranberry Bread for us kids to take to our teachers this time of year. I believe they were much appreciated. The recipe she used (and still does use) was the recipe from the back of the bag of cranberries, and this is the recipe that I still use and love. The only things I've really changed are: I've upped the amount of orange zest (cause I loves the orange zest) and I use butter instead of shortening (everything is better with butter, right?). This is a wonderful bread to add to your Thanksgiving, Christmas, or other Holiday feasts. It rocks alone or with a slathering of butter. Mmmmmmmm.

Cranberry Orange Quickbread: (I doubled this to yield 3 smaller loaves, the recipe as given here yields one 9x5" loaf)

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup orange juice
2 Tbsp butter, melted and cooled
2 Tbsp minced orange zest
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 cup cranberries, halved
1/2 cup chopped nuts (I used my usual pecans)
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-Preheat oven to 350f. Grease one 9x5" loaf pan.
-In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
-To the dries add the orange juice, orange zest, egg, and butter. Mix until the it just starts to come together and add the cranberries and nuts. Mix just until the cranberries and nuts are distributed throughout.
-Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan (it takes a whole lotta restraint to keep me from eating the batter, yum).
-Bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
-Cool, spread with butter or eat naked and enjoy.

The cranberry bread is baking as I type this, and I realized that I made a boo-boo. I switched my amounts of the baking powder and soda. Don't you be silly and do this too! Well, we shall see what happens. I'm going to guess that I'll get less of a nice rise and more of a spread-out top on the loaf (and I'm going to guess that I'll be kicking myself about this for the next few hours). I'm hoping the taste isn't too baking soda-y. This is why the Barmy Baker shouldn't bake when there are too many things on her mind :). I'll post the picture of the way the loaves turned out, so you can see how you don't want yours to look.

Hope you enjoy! Happy Baking!

Note the flat tops. Yours will turn out beautifully with slightly domed tops, because you will be paying attention to what you are doing unlike a certain Barmy Baker I could mention.....

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