Cranberry Orange Pecan Loaf Cake

Cranberry Orange Pecan Loaf Cake. I had some fresh cranberries leftover from Thanksgiving and wanted to make some type of cake with them, I made a Cranberry Cobbler years ago but wanted something different, so here we are. This is such a great cake! I adapted the recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction and made a few changes. For one, I melted the butter for the streusel, a lot of recipes say to use cold butter and crumble it into the flour and sugar, but sometimes I end up with flour that’s not quite mixed in with the butter after it’s done, I find it’s easier and more reliable to just add the sugar, spice and flour to melted butter. Also instead of buttermilk I used a mixture of greek yogurt and milk, and I added some Pecans to the recipe.

My baking time was a lot different than the 45 minutes to an hour suggested in the original recipe, it may have been due to the pan I used, a cast iron loaf pan, but in any case the total bake time for me was 1 hour and 20 minutes! It didn’t seem quite done after an hour so I took the temperature and let it go longer until it reached 200°. That worked! It’s a great cake, enjoy!

Oh and be careful out there friends, Covid-19 cases are going through the roof! We’re so close to getting a vaccine, it’s not that much longer, do your best to stay safe for you, your family, your neighbors, friends, we’re all in this together! 

Cranberry Orange Pecan Loaf Cake

Streusel

• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

• 2 Tablespoons granulated sugar

• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• 3 Tablespoons salted butter, melted

Cake

• 2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 1 large egg

• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar

• 2/3 cup milk

• 1/3 cup greek yogurt

• 1/3 cup vegetable oil 

• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

• 2 teaspoons orange zest (about 1 orange zested)

• 1 cup fresh cranberries (more for topping)

• 1/2 cup crushed pecans (more for topping)

Glaze

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar

• 1 Tablespoon orange juice

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan with butter, line with parchment paper and butter that as well.

Make the streusel: Whisk the flour, sugar, and cinnamon together in a medium bowl. Add the melted butter and stir with a fork until combined. Set aside.

Make the cake: Whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl. 

In a medium bowl, whisk the egg, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together until combined. Whisk in the milk, yogurt, oil, vanilla, and orange zest. 

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, then fold with a rubber spatula to completely combine. Fold in the cranberries and Pecans.

Pour the batter into prepared loaf pan. Scatter the streusel on top, add a few cranberries and crushed pecans. Cover the baking dish with foil and bake for 35 minutes. Then remove foil and bake for an additional 25-45 minutes. Cake is done when cake tester or toothpick comes out clean (or at 200° temp, I started using a thermometer because sometimes it comes out clean and it’s not bake all the way through!)

Cool bread completely in the pan set on a wire rack. Then remove using your “parchment handles” onto serving plate or board.

The glaze! In a small bowl, whisk the powdered sugar and orange juice together. Drizzle over cooled bread.

Slice and serve. Cover and store leftover bread at room temperature for 1 day or in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

Adapted from Sally’s Baking Addiction

Lemonade

Is it summer yet? Ah tomorrow is the first day (I asked Alexa). We had a preview of it last week with a couple days reaching close to 100° so I decided to make some Lemonade. It’s so refreshing and nothing matches fresh squeezed lemon juice. This is my favorite time of year here in Portland. The garden beds have been planted with four kinds of tomatoes, zucchini, three kinds of peppers, radishes and butter crunch lettuce + 2 kinds of basil. And, I put some potatoes in a bucket to see if I could grow them. Oh and pickling cucumbers, I’m super excited about that. A couple years ago we planted regular cucumbers and it produced so many cucumbers we couldn’t keep up, we offered some to our neighbors and they’re like no, no more cucumbers! lol. Ah! So it was 2015 not a couple years ago, I made a salad, a soup, Sesame Noodles with Cucumber and infused them in Vodka. I’ll call that the year of the cucumber. I hope this year will be the year of the tomato, for some reason our tomatoes didn’t do so well last year, very strange because they are usually the easiest to grow. We will see how it all turns out. The raspberries are just starting to ripen, and it looks like a good year for them, many many berries with more still blossoming. So you can count on a raspberry recipe soonish. Lemonade recipe below, I didn’t do any fancy infusing or anything, this is just your basic Lemonade, I used 3/4 cup of simple syrup but I think I could have gone with 1/2 cup, but it’s up to you and what you like. Enjoy!

Lemonade

• 1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice. about 6 lemons

• 3/4 cup simple syrup

• 3-4 cups water

Add lemon juice, simple syrup and 3 cups of water to a pitcher, stir and taste, add more water or simple syrup as needed. I didn’t use a whole cup of syrup and I thought it was sweet enough. So best to build up the flavors and taste to your liking. I ended up using 3.5 cups water.