Love of the Loaf

This year I added a new dessert to our Thanksgiving feast. J loved it so much I made another loaf for his birthday this week and he wants it for Christmas dinner. He’s developed a love of the loaf and I’m thrilled. I honestly wasn’t sure if he’d like it because heck it took five years to get him to eat breakfast sausage. Thankfully his taste has evolved since we first got together. In the past month I’ve introduced three new recipes and they’ve all been a huge hit. This cranberry loaf is easy peasy and whips up in no time flat.

Since there are tons of food blogs and recipes sites I decided to keep it simple for my first attempt and I got the recipe from Ocean Spray for Classic Cranberry Nut Bread.

CLASSIC CRANBERRY NUT BREAD FROM OCEANSPRAY RECIPESINGREDIENTS

2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 cup orange juice

1 tablespoon grated orange peel

2 tablespoons shortening ( used Crisco Butter Flavor Shortening)

1 egg, well beaten

1 1/2 cups Ocean Spray® Fresh or Frozen Cranberries, coarsely chopped

1/2 cup chopped nuts ( I toasted pecans and bumped the amount up to 3/4 cup)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan.

Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a medium mixing bowl. Stir in orange juice, orange peel, shortening and egg. Mix until well blended. Stir in cranberries and nuts. Spread evenly in loaf pan.

Bake for 55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a rack for 15 minutes. Remove from pan; cool completely. Wrap and store overnight. Makes 1 loaf (16 slices).

Instead of greasing the loaf pan I lined it with parchment paper because I’ve gotten used to doing that for many of my baked goods. The loaf was done to perfection in 50 minutes. It’s the perfect blend of sweet and tart with crunchy toasted pecan flavor throughout. Quick loaf recipes are finding their way into my dessert rotation and replacing cakes. We enjoy cake but a standard cake is just too much for the two of us and it goes to waste. Recipes like this are quick to make and there’s just enough for the week without it going bad.

It’s another recipe to go into my notebook. The sons want copies of all the recipes they grew up eating and suggested that I have a family cookbook printed. It’s a great idea except that I keep adding recipes, my daughter-in-law keeps adding recipes so it would be costly to make new “editions”. Instead I’ll purchase quality binders, do a bit of magic in Photoshop and create something that we can add to each year. That definitely needs to move up on my project list.

Stay tuned…