Spring Recipe: Homemade Cranberry Orange Streusel Bread

This easy to make yet exceptionally delicious Cranberry Orange Streusel Bread is great any time of the year. It makes a wonderfully festive Christmas holiday bread, due to the yummy flourishes of cranberries and nutmeg. Also, due to the delicate fruit medley of cranberry and orange zest, it makes a lovely recipe for spring.

This Cranberry Orange Streusel Bread would make a delightful gift, a welcome addition to a bake sale, and an extra-yummy treat in your own kitchen.

This sweet recipe was passed along to me by my sister-in-law and I have applied a few of my own little variations. You may most certainly feel free to make small changes, too, such as slightly adjusting quantities to suit your own taste, but here are the basics of this taste sensation Cranberry Orange Streusel Bread.

Before you start preparing your ingredients, start your oven preheating to 350 degrees.

You will need to prepare the Streusel mix and the Bread mix in two separate bowls.

For the Streusel mix, combine 1/3 cup brown sugar (light or dark is up to you), 3 tablespoons flour, and 2 tablespoons margarine. If you enjoy nuts, you may also feel free to add approximately ¾ cup of your favorite chopped nut (or maybe even a mixture of several chopped nuts), but if you don't care for nuts or are worried about somebody's nut allergy, leaving out that component will be fine.

For the Bread mix, combine 2 cups flour, 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder, ¼ teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon nutmeg, 3 tablespoons melted margarine, 1 egg lightly beaten, ¾ cup orange juice, the grated peel of one large orange, and 1 cup of cranberries.

There is some room for variation here to accommodate individual tastes. For example, I very much prefer fresh cranberries for this recipe, but dried cranberries would also be an option. If your dislike cranberries, you can even consider substituting a somewhat comparable fruit such as blueberries or dried cherries. If you think you'd like your bread to be extra-fruity or extra-zesty, you may slightly increase the quantities of fruit and/or orange zest that you add to the mix. Personally, I sometimes like to add a little extra orange zest, cranberries, AND freshly-grated nutmeg so that my bread is just bursting with flavor. However, those who think they would prefer a more subtle or demure flavor can stick more closely to the recipe or even decrease the quantities of fruit and nutmeg if so inclined.

After you have blended up each set of ingredients to suit your specifications, you will need to grease or flour a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan.

Inside this pan, you will need to layer the Streusel Mix and the Bread Mix. Start by pouring in ½ of the bread batter, then add ½ of the streusel mix, then pour in the second half of the bread better, then top with the rest of the streusel mix.

When your oven has preheated to 350 degrees, insert your layered extravaganza of soon-to-be mouthwatering Cranberry Orange Streusel Bread and bake for one hour and ten minutes.

Prepare to enjoy a luscious spring recipe treat!