Drunken Cranberry Orange Bread

I snatched up this bag of cranberries in the produce section of my grocery store the second I saw it.  It's sad that you can't get fresh cranberries all year because they make the best baked goods!  Cranberry bread is one of my favorite breakfast breads.  The sweet bread and the tart cranberries are a perfect combination.

I require a hint of orange in my cranberry bread.  Unfortunately, today I did not have any oranges or orange juice.  Unfortunately, I was too lazy to get out of my pajamas to go to the store.  Fortunately, I did have was orange booze.  It's rare we don't have orange booze in our house - it's a staple in margaritas and we drink a lot of margaritas.  It pairs well with our love of Mexican food.

I don't know why there is sour cream in this picture.  I don't know why there isn't milk in this picture  My memory is failing me.  I must have thought I would use sour cream instead of milk but did not.  It was early.  I hadn't had any coffee yet.

This bread is made similar to scones where cold butter is cut into the dry ingredients.  Then the wet ingredients are folded in until the dough just barely comes together.  Then the good stuff goes in... coarsely chopped cranberries and pecans.  I don't like to cut up the cranberries and pecans too small, I like some good sized chunks in there.

The original recipe called for orange juice and an egg as the wet ingredients to bind everything together.  I did have one egg (thank goodness - I didn't check the egg crate before starting to bake and it turned out I had only one egg... I didn't notice CA used a bunch of eggs up when I made him make me cornbread and left only one... they should make egg crates see through) but I did not have any orange juice.  The only orange flavored thing I had was triple sec.  I decided that replacing all the orange juice with booze would be a little aggressive (an unusual display of self restraint) so I put in both liquor and milk.

I crossed my fingers a little bit when I put this in the oven.  The batter looked good and tasted good but often my substitutions don't work out quite like I want them to.  There was no reason to worry.  I'm due for a big baking disaster, it's been a while since I dropped something or burned something or myself but today was not that day.  Thank goodness because I was starving and really wanted cranberry bread.

I got exactly what I wanted which was fantastic.  The bread was moist, perfectly tart,  and with just the right amount of orange flavor.  I loved it so much that I didn't give any of it away... except to Captain America.  It would have been mean of me to hide it from him although I thought about it.  I ate this for breakfast and for snacks until every crumb of it was gone.  I have cranberries left that I need to use and if I didn't want to make something new for all of you I'd totally make this again.

Drunken Cranberry Orange Bread
Adapted from Epicurious

Ingredients 
2 cups Flour
1 cup Sugar
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold Unsalted Butter, cut into small cubes 
1/4 cup Orange Liquor (triple sec, cointreau or grand marnier)
1/2 cup Milk
1 Egg, lightly beaten
1 cup coarsely chopped Cranberries
1/3 cup coarsely chopped Pecans


Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Spray a loaf pan with non-stick cooking spray.

In a bowl mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt.  Add the butter and cut it into the dry ingredients with a fork or pastry blender until the mixture resembles meal.  (You can also do this by pulsing all the ingredients together in the food processor).  Add the liquor, milk and egg to the flour mixture and stir the batter until it is just combined. Stir in the cranberries and walnuts and transfer the batter to the prepared loaf pan.

Bake the bread for 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.  Let the bread cool in the pan for 15 minutes and turn it out onto a rack.

Enjoy!
Julie