Cranberry Muffins of Love

I don’t cook banana bread.

I cook cranberry bread. The tartness better fits my personality. I use twice as much cranberries as the recipe calls for. It adds zest.

Interestingly, you can take a bag of fresh cranberries, put them in a plastic grocery bag, and store them in the freezer for years.  All those anti-oxidants keep them from going bad or getting freezer burn flavor. I recently pulled out a four year old bag and made waffles. So you can stock up in November & December and make cranberry goodies all year.

My cranberry bread recipe I got from Diet for a Small Planet by Ellen Buchman Ewald. The whole wheat adds a lot of flavor. And the milk powder makes it richer. The recipe comes from back in the days when they thought vegetarians would die from lack of protein. Turns out that if you eat something other than fruit or junk food, you can’t help but get more than enough protein in your diet.

Around here we also experiment with adding carob chips or shredded coconut. My favorite addition to the muffins was a small lump of cream cheese buried in the center. But mainly I just like them plain.

I usually make a double batch.  If you need more than that, it’s better to make more batches than to try to handle it all at once.

Thanksgiving Cranberry Bread
a 5″ by 9″ loaf of 12 slices (or a bunch of muffins)
1 slice = approx 5 grams of usable protein
11% to 13% of average daily protein need

1/4 cup butter
2/3 cup honey
2 eggs
1 cup orange juice

2 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup milk powder (1/3 cup instant)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup chopped nuts (walnuts work great, or a mixture of walnuts and pecans and almonds)
2 cups fresh whole cranberries (I use a whole bag, about 4 cups.)

1) cream the butter and honey.
beat in the eggs and orange juice
2) in a separate bowl stir together all the dry ingredients (not the cranberries, unless you want to)
add this gradually into the liquid mixture
fold in the cranberries
3) turn batter into an oiled and floured loaf pan
bake at 325′ F for 1 to 1-1/4 hours
===OR===
spoon into paper cup lined muffin tins
bake at 350′ F for about 25 minutes maybe

Try not to eat them all at once.

So what’s your favorite recipe?