Orange Loaf

Source

Joy of Baking blog, Cranberry Orange Bread recipe adapted

Taste 3 (out of 5)

Difficulty 1 (out of 5)

Ingredients

- 1/2 cup/ 50 gr pecans or walnuts coarsely chopped

- 2 cups/ 280 gr all-purpose flour

- 1 cup/ 200 gr light brown sugar

- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

- 1/2 tsp baking soda

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 1 tbsp ground orange or other citrus zest

- 4 tbsp/ 57 gr softened margarine

- 1 large egg, well beaten

- 1 cup/ 240 ml freshly squeezed orange juice

- 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

- 1/2 tsp orange extract

Instructions

1. Mix baking soda with the orange juice, stir well, until bubbles appear and all the baking soda dissolves. If you skip this stage, the cake might have a bitter trace of baking soda.

2. Beat all ingredients except the nuts together, preferably with an electric mixer. The batter will be rather firm. Add the nuts and mix gently with a spatula.

3. Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease a 9x5x3 inch loaf pan and pour the batter. Bake for 50-60 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

4. Let cool in the loaf pan, remove and let cool completely on a wire rack. Serve warm or cold, with cranberry sauce, jam or whipped cream.

Afterthoughts

- Taste-wise it’s great. The texture could be better.

- This cake is a bit too heavy for my taste. I like lighter loaf, so in the future I would add milk or yogurt. But then the cake would not be dairy free.

- Another option might be pouring a citrus syrup over the loaf to make it wetter.