Cranberry Orange Bread

This is my family’s most iconic Thanksgiving recipe…and it’s not actually mine. It’s adapted lightly from Cranberry Thanksgiving, a sweet Thanksgiving book about a girl and her grandmother that spares us the problematic pilgrim imagery and false narratives about Indigenous people and colonizers, but does have a lovely message about being thankful for what you have and sharing it with others, no matter who they are.

Plus there’s baking. Such baking.

I always make two loaves (sometimes three…or four…) because it can easily be breakfast, accompany dinner, or make an absolutely bonkers delicious turkey sandwich the next day. It’s also a really nice gift for neighbors, teachers, and anyone you’re thankful to have in your life. You can bake it in compostable paper loaf pans like these, or wrap them in compostable parchment and tie with a nice ribbon or twine.

You can and definitely should make this the day before Thanksgiving, or even two days ahead, because it takes a while to bake and cool and will stay good for several days.

For the chopped cranberries, I usually do them by hand one at a time with a small knife. It’s a tradition I’ve grown to enjoy, and I do think the texture is better when they’re chopped by hand. I often try to rope someone into doing it with me, but I apparently am the only one in my family who enjoys this task.

That said, if you are like the rest of my family and don’t find repetitive knife work soothing, feel free to lightly pulse the cranberries in a few batches in a food processor, or honestly leave them whole. If you leave them whole, you might need to increase the baking time a little and be careful when you cut the bread so it doesn’t tear. A serrated knife is the way to go.

Recipe

Ingredients

Adapted lightly from Cranberry Thanksgiving

2 cups (250g) flour

1 cup (200g) sugar

1 ½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

¼ cup (55g) butter, cut into cubes, plus about 1 tbsp extra to grease the loaf pan

1 egg, beaten

¾ cup orange juice (you can juice the orange you zest, then top up with more juice if needed to reduce waste)

Zest of 1 navel orange

3 cups cranberries, chopped (about 12oz or 340 grams)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F, then grease a 10x5 loaf pan with butter and line it with parchment paper.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the butter and mix with a pastry blender or your fingers until the mixture is crumbly and resembles coarse sand. You shouldn’t have any visible chunks of butter.

Next, add the egg, orange juice, and orange zest and mix until just combined.

Fold in the cranberries. 

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for approximately an hour to an hour and ten minutes, until a toothpick or cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs.

Remove the bread from the pan and cool on a wire cooling rack. Wait to slice it until it’s completely cool, which is a bit torturous but will keep you from having a major mess on your hands.

The bread should keep well-wrapped at room temperature for at least three days, or in the freezer for up to two months.

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