There must be a bunch of recipes for Cranberry Nut Bread floating around. This is a recreation Mom's recipe, which uses whole cranberries. They create little pockets of tartness within the rest of the bread.

N.B. #1: The metric amounts don't quite match common conversions. The only critical ingredient is the orange juice, and ultimately that becomes a judgement call. Everything else can be off by several percent and this will still be great.

N.B. #2: I'm a software engineer so I've gone a bit overboard with the metric measurements. I use measuring spoons for the baking powder and baking soda. And don't bother to weigh the eggs unless you're a curious engineer!

N.B. #3: Visit and print a trimmed variant of this page that is better for working in the kitchen.

Ingredients

Prepare and bake

Wash and rinse cranberries. Discard squishy, fermenting ones. Chop walnuts, big pieces should be smaller than cranberries, bigger than walnut sundae topping. Grate orange peel. Make orange juice.

Grease and lightly flour two loaf pans - 9" x 5" x 3". Start preheating oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and orange peel. Cut in butter. Stir in egg and most of the juice. The batter should be thick enough to prevent cranberries from floating during baking. Add more juice if necessary. Drink any left over juice. Next time, juice an extra orange to have more to drink. Fold in cranberries and nuts. Spoon the batter into prepared pans and bake for 1 hour or until tester comes out clean. Cool on rack for 15 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely.

Notes for next time and notes in general

These will make more sense the next time through, or use them now if you don't mind a little extra complexity.

Months after Mom died, we discovered that she had never written down her recipe. I decided to try to recreate it, though I was no chef. My search for a recipe started and ended on a bag of Ocean Spray cranberries, but it had some obvious flaws which still exist at Ocean Spray.

I even sent a letter to Ocean Spray in 1986 suggesting whole cranberries. For some reason, I still have their reply which notes in part:

On the whole we've found that consumers prefer chopped berries both because of flavor and because they'll stretch farther.

Whatever. For Thanksgiving 2024 I discovered that their web based recipe page now accepts reviews. It will show reviews 1-8 of however many reviews match some search criteria, apparently with no way to see more than that. So I submitted a 4-star review stating "DO NOT chop the cranberries" and included other, tamer suggestions. I included two photos, one showing two loaves, the other showing sliced bread with well distributed whole cranberries. Photos are very good at boosting reviews and there was only one earlier photo, and a very lame one at that.

My review got accepted, and showed up as #4 of "1 - 8 of 645 Reviews". Please do us a favor - visit the page and click on its "Helpful?" thumbs-up. I'd like to keep it displayed!

• 12 ozs whole cranberries (1 bag)
  Ocean Spray said to use fewer cranberries and to chop them. That was the biggest flaw. I even suggested to Ocean Spray that they change to whole cranberries, but they replied they wanted to save their customers some money. The second big flaw is that their recipe makes one loaf. That's nowhere near enough.

• 1 1/2 cups walnuts (170g)
  I buy bags labelled "halves and pieces". If you bought "chopped," you probably want a smaller volume, but the same weight.

• 1 1/2 cups orange juice (350g)
  The last time I made this, I used 333g of orange juice.

  Florida juice oranges before January (Hamlin) don't have as much flavor as the later Valencias. I buy a couple Florida navel oranges for grating and sometimes use them for all the juice too. I might try including some lemon juice next time.

• 3 Tbsps grated orange peel (20g)
  I've increased this in part to compensate for early oranges' low flavor.

• 4 cups all-purpose flour (500g)
  I've been using half all-purpose flour and half white whole wheat flour. Works well. King Arthur Baking says a cup of those are 120 and 113 grams/cup. Don't worry about the difference.

• 2 cups sugar (400g)
  And we agree that a cup of sugar is 198g. I immediately went with 200g. That 2g difference is merely half a teaspoon. If you're a stickler for precision but don't like weighing ingredients, feel free to measure 1 47/48ths cups of sugar.

• Spoon the batter into prepared pans
  I made a note of the weight of the mixing bowl, both empty and full, it should be a bit less than 2,000g. Knowing that makes it easier to split the batter between the two pans. It also helps with baking a single loaf for home and mini-loaves for favorite neighbors. Three 5.75" x 3.25" x 2.00" pans works well. Baking time was about five minutes less. Don't bother with prepping disposable mini-loaf pans.

  The last few spoonfuls of batter wind up having no cranberries. I underfill the loaf pans by a bit, then use the last of the batter to top off the pans and cover the cranberries on the suface.

• Start preheating oven to 350°F
  I use a convection oven, they suggest setting the thermostat to some 25 F° less than in a conventional oven, 325°F worked well.

Finally, if you visit NH or VT near Hanover, Dartmouth College, and White River Jct, make time to go to nearby Norwich VT and visit the King Arthur store for lunch. The Montshire Museum of Science is also in town and worth visiting.

Contact Ric Werme or return to his home page.

Written 2023 Jan 1, last updated 2024 Nov 29.