This cranberry orange pecan bread has a subtle sweetness and slight tartness that makes it a welcome respite from whatever you’re doing any time of day, any time of year. It also makes a terrific gift, which is why the recipe makes not one but two loaves—one to gift, one to keep.–Renee Schettler Rossi
*How to bake with cranberries
We’re quite smitten with the jarring tartness that happens when you bite into a burst of cranberry in this cranberry orange bread. But don’t be tempted to leave the cranberries whole in this recipe or any quick bread or coffee cake recipe. Why? Whole cranberries tend to float to the surface rather than staying pleasingly dispersed throughout the baked good. Simply pulse the cranberries in your food processor until coarsely chopped but not mushy and then toss them in your quick bread batter. [Editor’s Note: We advise against attempting to chop fresh cranberries with a knife on a cutting board given just how maddeningly roly-poly they can be. It’s not only frustrating but dangerous.]
Cranberry Orange Pecan Bread
Ingredients
- 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for the pans
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 1/4 cups buttermilk, (either low-fat or full-fat)
- Zest and juice from 1 large orange, preferably organic (about 1 1/2 tablespoons finely grated zest plus 1/4 cup juice)
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 1/4 cups granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup mild vegetable or olive oil, plus more for the pans
- 3 large eggs, lightly beaten
- 1 3/4 cups cranberries, fresh or frozen (do not thaw if using frozen cranberries)
- 1/2 cup pecans, lightly toasted and coarsely chopped
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Lightly oil and flour two 9-by-5-inch loaf pans.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and baking soda.
- In a smaller bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, orange zest and juice, and vanilla.
- Using a stand mixer fit with the paddle attachment, beat the sugar and oil on medium-high speed until thoroughly combined and somewhat sandy. Reduce the speed to low and slowly add the eggs. Increase the speed to medium and continue to mix for 2 minutes.
- Reduce the speed to low again and add 1/3 of the flour mixture, mixing just until incorporated. Increase the speed to medium and mix for 1 minute. Add half the buttermilk mixture and mix briefly to incorporate. Repeat with the remaining buttermilk mixture and the remaining dry ingredients, beginning and ending with the flour mixture, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary and stirring only as long as is required to completely combine the ingredients.
- Coarsely chop the cranberries in your food processor. (See *How to bake with cranberries" above.) Gently stir the cranberries and pecans into the batter, being careful not to overmix. Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans so that each is slightly more than half full.
- Bake the cranberry orange pecan bread, rotating the pans every 20 minutes or so, until the loaves are golden brown with cracked tops and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. You want to start checking the bread at 45 minutes, although it could take as long as 75 minutes.
- Let the breads cool in the pans for at least 10 minutes. Turn the loaves onto a wire rack to cool completely before you slice and demolish.
Notes
How To Make Cranberry Orange Pecan Muffins Or Mini Loaves
If you prefer to make muffins or mini loaves of cranberry orange pecan bread to gift, simply divvy the batter among 12- to 18-cup muffin tins or 6 mini-loaf pans and start checking for doneness after 15 minutes for muffins, 25 minutes for mini loaves. If you have a convection oven, you can turn that on during the final few minutes to lend the muffins or mini loaves a golden color.Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Recipe Testers’ Reviews
Polish your best silver tray. This cranberry orange pecan bread deserves royal treatment. It’s the right kind of quick bread to serve along with your holiday spread. Morning, noon, or night, this bread is for any hour of the day when you just want to spoil yourself or your guests. Citrus scents and tart cranberries make this loaf a joy to eat.
You can make it in short order, and it’ll keep moist for days, or you can freeze it for later. Just be sure to pick up extra bags of fresh cranberries in the fall and freeze them. One loaf won’t be enough because your silver tray won’t stay full for long.
It’s beginning to look, taste, and smell a lot like Christmas. That’s how we feel every holiday season when I’m making this flavorful, extremely moist bread. I have been making this recipe for years.
It makes 2 loaves of bread, which ordinarily I would be hesitant about. Two loaves of bread for two people. Here it’s not at all a problem. Actually, it’s a necessity. One loaf we eat fairly quickly after I make it. I slice the other loaf of bread, wrap each slice separately, freeze each one, and then vacuum-seal the slices once they are frozen in one of those heavy bags made for such a purpose. All through the year, when we want to feel festive, or just have a special treat, we defrost a slice or two, and it’s Christmas morning all over again.
And, if the slices don’t make it till the next Christmas, I just make more bread. That’s enough of a reason to freeze a bag or two of fresh cranberries when they are available. Just don’t defrost them before using.
I use 1/4 cup of tangerine juice for this recipe because that’s what we tend to have in the refrigerator.
I slice the cranberries by hand. I hold each cranberry between my thumb and index finger with my left hand, and then cut each cranberry in half diagonally with a sharp knife with my right hand. This works very well, goes very quickly, and my pieces have some substance.
It’s so nice when everything in a recipe works as expected and what you see is what you get…and what you get here is a remarkably moist quick bread (thanks to eggs, buttermilk, and olive oil), scented with orange and flecked with chunks of cranberry and pecans. I recommend making this recipe the day before, because the flavor is at its peak when it’s had some time to rest after baking.
For me, the batter made one 9-by-5-inch loaf and seven 4.5-by-2.5-inch mini-loaves, which I distributed throughout the neighborhood. The mini-loaves are adorable and great for gifting, but I imagine they’d make fantastic muffins as well. I’d offer to report back how the texture was after several days, but I already know it won’t last that long.
I recommend rubbing the zest into the sugar and letting it sit while you do the rest of your prep work. The sugar really helps draw the oils out of the zest, giving the sugar a light orange tint and really releasing the orange fragrance. This ensures the orange is evenly spread throughout your bread.
The mini loaves took 30 minutes (i turned the convection on the last 5 minutes to help color the top, which was a little pale at 25 minutes).
Cranberry Cake and Rum Sauce
————————————————————
CAKE
4 cups flour
2 cups sugar
5 teaspoons baking powder
6 tablespoons shortening melted
1 1/3 cups whole milk
4 cups cranberries raw or frozen bag
2 large eggs
SAUCE
1/2 cup melted butter
1 cup brown sugar light or dark
2 tablespoons flour
dash salt
1 cup hot water
3 tablespoons Meyer’s or Appleton Estate rum
Instructions: The Cake: Sift the dry ingredients add the shortening, egg, milk, beat 2 minutes. Stir in the cranberries. Pour into greased 9″ X 13″ pan. Bake in 350 degree oven 45 minutes.
Sauce: Cook in a sauce pan all the ingredients and add more rum if too thick.
To Serve: Cut cake into 9 sections, serve, pour sauce over individual pieces.
Thank you, Stu!
This sounds yummy. I am wondering if I could use regular unsalted butter instead of oil. Looking forward to your feedback 🙂
Sue, lovely to hear you’re as enticed by this recipe as we are! As for swapping butter for the oil, I hesitate to encourage that simply because baking is such a precise science. We tested the recipe with oil and it worked marvelously. But I’m quite concerned that if you use butter the ratio of wet to dry will be thrown off and the texture, if not the taste, will be compromised. I’d stick with oil.
This is a killer recipe but my cranberries all floated to the top of the bread during baking. Any suggestion on how to keep them from doing this so they are more spread out in the loaf? The best way to eat this is to toast a slice and put a hint of butter. WOW!!!
Hi Sanja, the easiest way to keep berries dispersed in a cake or bread is to coat them in a bit of flour before incorporating them. Sorry that you had an issue with floating cranberries but so happy that you enjoyed the bread!
Sanja, one more thought on the floating cranberries. We were all curious to hear of your situation because we’d never had this happen to us when we baked the bread. One of our recipes testers who was particularly intrigued by your comment did a little investigative reporting. Here’s what she had to say… “At Thanksgiving time when I used fresh cranberries for the very first time, I noticed they all floated to the top until boiled and ‘popped.’ You piqued my curiosity with this reader question, so I actually called Ocean Spray and they said there is an air pocket in each cranberry. Once the cranberry is ‘popped,” the air disappears. A good way around the floaters, which may or may not happen all the time—I guess it may be based on the crop—is to actually cut the cranberries in half. If the reader wants to use whole cranberries they may want to try popping each one to let the air escape by either piercing with a fork or knife or boiling them until they pop. Hope this helps.” We’re actually retesting the bread with chopped cranberries to see how this technique works, will let you know how it goes soon as it comes out of the oven!
Thanks Beth and Renee! The airpocket in the berries makes sense, especially since the cranberries I had were very large—BIG airpockets! I just made another batch last night as mini loaves for holiday gifts and coarsely chopped half the cranberries and also added about 1/4 cup dried cranberries. The loaves look delicious and don’t have too many cranberries on top so I think that worked. I got 6 mini loaves from the recipe! I wish I could cut into one to see, but need to give them all away. 🙁 Will be making more this weekend with this method and will certainly save a loaf for just me…so delicious!! Am happy to share a pic of my miniloaves 🙂
Hurrah! That’s splendid to hear, Sanja, thank you for sharing that with us! And the mini loaves are a brilliant holiday gift. I’m going to add a note to the recipe suggesting that and giving you all due credit. Love it. And I really appreciate you letting us know it seemed to work well. Wishing you all the magic of the season! Oh, and I would love to see your photo! Can you email it to me at renee@leitesculinaria.com?
Renee; try making a Meyer’s Rum caramel sauce and pour that over a slice of this cake. It is a knockout.
Thanks, Stu. Gilding the lily, I see!
Renee; When I married my wife, 50 years ago, she brought with her a recipe for Cranberry Cake with Rum Sauce, which I was instructed NEVER to share with anyone outside the family. It was an exclusive heirloom recipe. The cake in this leitesculinaria segment is not the same, but close enough to warrant the sauce. Our cake is a more classic soft light cake with berries. We serve it in large squares, opened thru the middle of the piece and the sauce poured over each half. It is served with the thanksgiving meal on the dinner plate. I could tell a little white lie and say that you are like family to me since we have been in touch for such a very long time, and, we have…….I am dying to give the recipe out because it is so good, and, only three people know it today. Only one of those has a descendent who likes to cook or bake. So, in the next generation there will only be one person with the recipe. Then, probably, no one. I want to spread it around. It’s just a simple cake recipe with cranberries in the batter and a caramel rum sauce. I am having “schpilkus” here. Ask someone who is Jewish in your office to translate.
Love the backstory to the recipe, Stu.