Grandma mackay's cranberry bread

 
                      GRANDMA MACKAY'S CRANBERRY BREAD
 
 Recipe By     : 
 Serving Size  : 2    Preparation Time :0:00
 Categories    : Usenet
 
   Amount  Measure       Ingredient -- Preparation Method
 --------  ------------  --------------------------------
    2       c            Flour, all-purpose
    1       c            Sugar, granulated
    1 1/2   t            Baking powder
      1/2   t            Baking soda
    1       t            Salt
      3/4   c            Orange juice (juice
                         -of one large orange)
    2       T            Shortening
    1       T            Orange peel, grated
                         -(one large orange)
    1                    Egg, beaten
    1       c            Cranberries, halved
                         -or chopped
    1       c            Walnuts or pecans,
                         -chopped
 
   Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease the bottom, but not the sides, of
   two small loaf pans.
   
   In a large bowl, sift together all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar,
   baking powder, baking soda and salt). Blend very well.
   
   Mix together the orange juice, orange peel, melted shortening and beaten
   egg. Mix only enough to blend uniformly. Mix in the cranberries and the
   nuts; stir gently. Pour the mixture into the loaf pans. Push it to the
   corners, leaving the center slightly hollow.
   
   Bake about an hour at 350 degrees F.  The loaves are done when a toothpick
   inserted in the middle comes out clean.  Cool completely before cutting. Do
   not try to serve warm.
   
   NOTES:
   
   *  A festive cranberry-orange nut-bread -- My grandmother MacKay clipped
   this recipe from the 1951 edition of the Pillsbury Bake-Off competition
   recipes, and we've made it a family tradition ever since. From time to time
   my mother and I have both tried to improve on the recipe, but it appears
   that the recipe is already perfect; every variation we have ever tried has
   been disappointing by comparison.
   
   When I was a boy, before the invention of the food processor, making this
   bread required cutting the cranberries in half by hand, with a knife, and
   the person who brought 4 loaves of cranberry bread to the family
   Thanksgiving meal was more welcome than the person who brought the turkey.
   Now, between Baker's Secret loaf pans and Cuisinart slicer blades, you can
   knock out 8 perfect loaves of the stuff while watching one episode of
   Sesame Street.  My grandmother still cuts each cranberry in half with a
   paring knife, and hers still tastes better than mine. Yield: 2 small
   loaves.
   
   *  It takes practice to know when to stop mixing the dough.  If you mix too
   much, the bread gets a chewy texture to it, whereas it should have a very
   crumbly consistency, like a muffin or cornbread.
   
   *  It really makes a difference in the texture of this bread to use a
   shortening that is solid at room temperature, like Crisco.  It really makes
   a difference in the flavor to use fresh orange-peel and not powdered. I
   prefer walnuts to pecans.
   
   *  It might seem sensible to try to use the same orange for the peel and
   the juice, but it is really more trouble than it is worth to try to peel a
   juiced orange or juice a peeled orange. I usually use two oranges and eat
   the one that I took the peel from.
   
   *  This bread keeps well in the freezer.  Specifically, it keeps from
   Thanksgiving to Christmas.  It also survives quite well being mailed by
   parcel post from Indiana to Maryland.
   
   : Difficulty:  moderate.
   : Time:  10 minutes preparation if you have a food processor, 2 hours
   baking and cooling.
   : Precision:  Measure carefully.
   
   : Brian Reid
   : DEC Western Research Laboratory, Palo Alto, California, USA
   : reid@decwrl.DEC.COM    -or- {ihnp4,ucbvax,decvax,sun,pyramid}!decwrl!reid
   
   : Copyright (C) 1986 USENET Community Trust
  
 
 
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