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Cran-Orange Bread will immediately bring a holiday feeling into your house. Not just because of the fresh cranberry, but because of the orange, which comes into season in November. This bread uses a whole orange – peel, pith, and all. That brings the orange flavor and scent to the fore, which allows it to complement the brilliance of the cranberries, and that’s the secret to this cranberry nut bread’s incredible flavor.

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The scent is so orange, it will tickle your nose. The nuts complement the moist, rich, tender texture. The crumb is just sweet enough to accommodate the dazzling cranberries, while the topping gives you a modest shot of sugary low tones that keeps the whole thing grounded. On the back end, the peel gives a subtle yet beautiful finish to the flavor profile.

When it comes time to scrape the cran-batter into the pan, don’t work too hard at getting every last cran-bit of it. That way, you’ll get to eat the batter that’s leftover. You’ll be tempted to skip the baking and serve up the batter in bowls, maybe with a bit of crème fraiche. It’s that cran-good.

Makes one standard-size loaf

Ingredients for the Topping

Scant ½-cup of 1-minute oats^[1]
¼ cup flour
¼ cup brown sugar
3 Tbs chopped pecans, walnuts, or almonds
1 tsp cardamom. If you don’t have cardamom, what a shame. Substitute clove.
¼ cup butter, melted

Ingredients for the Bread

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 orange
¼ cup plus 2 Tbs shortening (melted)^[2]
2 eggs, beaten
¼ cup + 1 Tbs chopped pecans, walnuts, or almonds
6 -8 oz. fresh or frozen cranberries (half of what ought to be a typical package)

Best Orange Cranberry Bread Recipe

Directions

1. In a small mixing bowl, stir together all topping ingredients. Set aside. 2. Butter and flour a standard-sized loaf pan.^[3] Set aside. 3. Combine dry bread ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer. 4. Preheat oven to 350°F. 3. Slice orange into sixteenths. If your orange has seeds … how weird. Remove them. Purée orange chunks in food processor. (If the orange doesn’t puree on its own, add some of the shortening to the processor.) Combine purée, shortening, and eggs. Mix into dry ingredients just until blended. Fold in cranberries and nuts. 5. Turn batter into pan. Massage the topping a bit with your fingers to break up any clumps. Sprinkle ½ to ⅔ of the topping over the batter. Press the topping into the batter, leveling the batter as you do so. Then add the rest of the topping, without pressing. 6. Bake 60-70 minutes. A tester may come out with a few, tiny, moist crumbs, but not with any liquid batter whatsoever. You have to test it in four or five locations to be sure with absolute confidence that it’s done. 7. Allow loaf to cool until you can easily handle it with bare hands. Depan thusly: cover the loaf with a tea towel before flipping the pan, bundling the loaf and pan fairly snugly. That will help keep the topping in place. Invert the pan, place it on one end of the rack, gently shake the bread out of the pan, fold the towel back, and gently roll the loaf upright, onto the other end of the rack. Allow loaf to cool fully.

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Cran-Orange Bread

Dear Bipartisan Cranberry Caucus: We are not idiots! Shrinking the standard-size bag of fresh cranberries from 12 oz. to 8 oz. while keeping the price the same does not fool us! First of all, the 8-oz. package is obviously smaller. You need to be a lot cran-trickier. You should, like, take one or two cranberries out of the bag, season after season, so that we don’t notice. Since virtually every recipe for cranberry sauce in the history of mankind starts with a 12-oz. bag of cranberries, we are forced to buy 16 ounces in order to get the 12 that we need. Very clever, you cran-asses. I’m going to take that extra 4 ounces of berries, find out where you live, and cran-pelt you with them as you leave for work in the morning.

Notes:

It’s Decorative Gourd Season

Vintage Glass Pan

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This quick bread can also be made as muffins. See this.

Credits for all images on this page: hover over image and/or green caption text. Click to jump to source.

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