Cranberries are here! Time to make fresh cranberry sauce and peruse our cookbooks or the Internet for recipes using cranberries. At our house we have already made the fruit torte using cranberries and on to making a batch of muffins for breakfast. Click here for a link to the torte. https://mymomlikestocook.com/2014/12/25/fresh-fruit-torte/.

This particular entry is a “quick bread”. Quick breads don’t use yeast that has to rise once or twice before it popped in the oven. You mix the ingredients, put them in a prepared pan, and that is that.

This particular quick bread is very quick to make as the name implies. Gather the ingredients, mix them with a wooden spoon, and it is ready to bake. It is also great because of its lack of fat. A small amount of oil is used instead of the usual butter, and only one egg. It can be baked as a loaf or be made into muffins. All and all, a very flexible, quick recipe.

Ingredients:

1. 1 ¼ cup fresh cranberries 
2. 3/4 cup fresh orange juice ( 2 large oranges)
3. 1 teaspoon orange zest
4. 1 egg
5. 2 Tbs. oil
6. 2 cups all-purpose flour
7. ¾ cup sugar
8. 1 ½ tsp. baking powder
9. 1 tsp. salt
10. ½ tsp. soda
11. ½ -1 cup walnuts, chopped

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare a loaf or muffin pan

First of all, gather your ingredients (mise en place!). Once you have your ingredients, you will need to chop your walnuts and either pulse the cranberries in a food processor or chop them.

I use a food processor to pulse the cranberries. 4-5 pulses does it, you do not want to over process.

Using a fine grater, grate an orange to obtain 1 tsp. orange peel.  Squeeze the juice from the orange to obtain ¾ cup.  You may need to use two oranges or substitute purchased orange juice.

In a small bowl or large measuring cup, combine the orange juice, orange peel, the egg and the oil.  Stir to blend and set aside.

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and soda into a mixing bowl.

Add the walnuts and the chopped fresh cranberries and stir.

Add the liquid ingredients and mix. (Don’t over mix!)

Pour batter (it will be rather stiff) into a loaf pan or muffin tin and bake: 45 minutes for a 5″x9″ loaf pan, 35 minutes for 6 large muffins, and about 30 minutes for 12 regular size muffins. Of course, baking times depends on the oven and the size of the pan. Since we are either at sea level in Florida or at 3200 feet in North Carolina, I am very sensitive to the relative time things take to cook or bake. Rule of thumb is that things ALWAYS takes longer if you are over 1000 feet and less if you are at sea level.

Yield:  1 loaf, 6 large or 12 regular size muffins.