orange cranberry bread

I LOVE orange cranberry bread, so today I "fed" my freezer six loaves and two and a half dozen muffins of it! YUMMY! I like these year 'round, but they just seem extra nice in the fall, orange and cranberry are really more "fall" type flavors. These will all be for after I have Miss C, so after they are frozen solid I'll vacuum seal them in bags to help them last even longer, since we will not be getting to them for a while. I found a recipe in a cook book for these, but then I messed with it, 'cause I like to do that! ;)

Here it is as I made the bread, but at the end I'll tell you the changes I made... Oh, and I doubled this recipe and then did it again to get so much out of it. This recipe will make two regular sized loaves for you.

Orange Cranberry bread

2 c. all-purpose flour

2 c. whole wheat pastry flour

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

shredded orange peel (from one orange)

2 eggs

4 T Butter, softened

1 1/2 cups orange juice

1 c sugar

1 c craisens (plus more OJ to soak them in)

First put your craisens in a small sauce pan and put enough OJ in to cover them, heat until bubbly, cover and let it sit (I often do this over night so that they will be ready in to morning to make up muffins). Preheat oven to 350, grease and flour 2 loaf pans. Use a lemon zester thing to shred the orange peel off the orange, or just buy some shredded orange peel (I like to use the fresh stuff, and then I squeeze the orange and enjoy a glass of fresh squeezed OJ!). Mix it in with all of the dry ingredients (the first 5 listed). In a separate bowl cream the butter and sugar together and then mix in the eggs. Drain the liquid out of the craisens and use that along with more OJ to equal 1 1/2 cups, mix the sugar mix and the OJ in with the dry ingredients and then add the softened craisens. Split the batter between the two loaf pans and bake for about 50 minutes.

The original recipe called for all of the flour to be "all-purpose flour", it also called for 2 cups of sugar instead of just one. It did not call for any orange peel/zest, but I like more orange flavor. It also called for raw cranberries, but I always have craisens in the house, so I used those. An added bonus of using the craisens was that they really needed to be softened, so cooking them in the OJ for a while added more orange flavor!

My kids always love it when I start doing all of this baking/cooking since I'm more likely to make our favorites or special foods we don't have too often. Mr. M and Miss J helped me with these today. Mr. M helped grab things for me, and stirred. Miss J put the cupcake liners in the muffin tin! She really did a great job and was so proud of herself. I'll have to make sure I give her this job any time we make cupcakes or muffins, she enjoyed being able to help so much and it tends to be harder to find jobs for the little ones.

*Mr. R has been asking me all day to pull his tooth, finally by this evening it was loose enough that I was able to pull it. He was so excited! The other front tooth should be coming out in the next couple of days too!