As the holidays roll in, it’s always nice to have a few crowd-pleaser baked goods on hand. When we visited the charming coastal town of Bandon, Oregon a few weeks ago, I was surprised to learn that one of the foods grown there is cranberries! Who knew! I was previously under the impression that cranberries were only a Northeast coast crop.
I bought a big bag of freshly picked berries to pop into the freezer at home. I started searching out ideas and reviewed a few quick bread recipes and then curated ideas from several to create my own version. And I’m happy to say that even my husband who claims to have never met a cranberry he liked before, loves this bread, too. As I have friends and family who are gluten intolerant, I also decided to make it gluten free.
This has more berries than most recipes and the gluten free oat flour also gives it a nice texture. As I’m making these as gifts for neighbors and friends, I scaled it to make two loaves in the size of the recyclable aluminum pans (interior pan measurement is appx. 3-1/2” X 7-1/2”.)
Ingredients for Bread:
- 2 cups gluten free oat flour
- 2/3 cup organic cane sugar
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 2/3 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda
- 2 cups of whole cranberries, fresh or frozen*
- 4 tbsp. organic applesauce
- 1 cup orange juice
- 2 tsp. pure vanilla
Ingredients for Glaze:
- 1/4 cup organic powdered sugar
- 2 tsp. orange juice
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease the two pans with butter or oil. Parchment paper on the bottom of the pan keeps the bread from sticking. Stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda & salt. In a separate bowl, stir together juice, vanilla and applesauce. Mix the wet and dry ingredients together. *If using frozen berries, no need to defrost them. Just rolling them in a little extra oat flower to lightly cover them will help keep them to all falling to the bottom of the bread while baking. Stir the whole berries into the batter. Divide between the two pans. Place pans on center oven rack. At 50 minutes, insert a toothpick. The bread is done when the pick is mostly clean.
Remove from the oven and cool completely. When cool, mix the glaze ingredients and spread over the bread. For a nice breakfast or snack treat, the bread is delicious sliced and toasted with a little butter or cream cheese.
