This is my version of my Grandma’s famous cranberry bread. It’s a delicious and delicate cranberry and orange sweet cake-like bread with fresh cranberries baked in. It’s a holiday must bake in my opinion.
I found a cookbook a few years ago with my great grandma and her 2 sister’s recipes in it. It’s such a special recipe book and I love to thumb through the recipes. They were Swedish and their heritage definitely shines through. In the book, I found their mother, my great great grandma’s, famous cranberry bread and knew I was going to love it! I made a few adjustments and made this my own recipe because I only post original recipes on my website that I have baked and perfected to my liking. However, I still feel like this recipe carries the spirit of my great great grandma with it.
While making this bread, I felt like I could almost peel back a curtain to see my great great grandma baking this for those she loved. It makes the house smell so warm and inviting and the smell took me back to a time before my time! I know she was baking it around Christmas every year and I can imagine the love that was felt in her home around that time. She had a hard life, her first husband died of the Spanish flu when her 3 daughters were young so she worked really hard to provide as a working single mother. She worked as a talented seamstress while raising her girls. She remarried and then a few years later her second husband past away from a heart attack unexpectedly. I can imagine she was a fierce woman with so much strength! I hope I can pass on my own legacy and the legacy of my ancestors, including my great great grandma, great grandma and grandma to my kids and so on. The connection to past, present and future is such a powerful thing!
On to this recipe, it is a really delicious recipe and I can tell why it was called grandmother’s famous cranberry bread and was made year after year. It’s super scrumptious!
The adjustment I made from the original recipe are that I added a little more sugar, I used salted butter instead of unsalted and I added more fresh orange zest. I also left out the raisins that she would add. So this is my ode to my great grandmas recipe,
What you need to make grandma’s famous cranberry bread:
Makes 1 standard bread pan
- 2 cups flour
- 1 1/8 cups sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup salted butter – cold and cut into chunks
- 3/4 cup orange juice
- 1 large egg
- 1 tablespoon fresh orange zest – or 1 teaspoon dried orange zest
- 1 1/2 cups cranberries – sliced in half
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 F.
- Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- Add chunked butter and mash into flour mixture so it forms a crumbly mixture.
- In another small bowl, add orange juice, egg and orange zest and whisk together.
- Pour wet mixture into the flour mixture and blend until smooth.
- Fold in the halved cranberries into the batter and mix well.
- Grease a 9 x 5 x 3 inches deep bread pan or any large bread pan and pour batter into it.
- Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until center of the loaf feels firm and a toothpick can be inserted in and comes out clean. If top starts to over brown before fully cooked, cover with a sheet of aluminum foil until bread finishes baking.
- Allow bread to cool completely before slicing.
Grandma’s Famous Cranberry Bread
Ingredients
- 2 cups flour
- 1 1/8 cups sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup salted butter – cold and cut into chunks
- 3/4 cup orange juice
- 1 large egg
- 1 tablespoon fresh orange zest – or 1 teaspoon dried orange zest
- 1 1/2 cups cranberries – sliced in half
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 F.
- Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- Add chunked butter and mash into flour mixture so it forms a crumbly mixture.
- In another small bowl, add orange juice, egg and orange zest and whisk together.
- Pour wet mixture into the flour mixture and blend until smooth.
- Fold in the halved cranberries into the batter and mix well.
- Grease a 9 x 5 x 3 inches deep bread pan or any large bread pan and pour batter into it.
- Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until center of the loaf feels firm and a toothpick can be inserted in and comes out clean. If top starts to over brown before fully cooked, cover with a sheet of aluminum foil until bread finishes baking.
- Allow bread to cool completely before slicing.