I enjoy cranberries. A lot. That tart with a twinge of sweet – they are a wonderful compliment to many other flavors like tangy citrus, spicy heat, and earthy herbs. They are delicious in baked goods, dips, the standard saucy side to your holiday turkey, and even cocktails! Bonus: they freeze well. Which is great considering their season is relatively short.
The recipe I always think of first when cranberry season rolls around is cranberry bread. My mother would stock up on cranberries every fall so that she could make cranberry bread all year. The year that I finally went to make cranberry bread myself for a Thanksgiving feast when Pop was in first grade – I was shocked to find out my mother’s recipe was simply the Ocean Spray back of the bag…go figure! But this year, I wanted to up the game on cranberry bread, so mashed it up with another favorite – cornbread.
I will be transparent upfront – the roughest part of this recipe will be chopping those cranberries. Luckily, the size of the chop is entirely up to you as baker and does not need to be consistent. So if you get halfway through and say “oh my goodness, I am done with chopping these suckers!” then you can give the rest a much rougher chop than the first half and be done ASAP. My trick here is to use a bread knife. I do not remember where I learned this, but its a technique that I first embraced when I was making granola weekly and chopping many almonds. The groves of the bread knife will lock on your round cranberries and make this process much easier.
Now that we have gotten that out of the way… Time to mix up our dry ingredients, mix up the wet, mix ’em together and into the oven it goes! 30 minutes or so later, give it a good old toothpick test (cake tester, fork tine, whatever you have on hand) – if it comes out dry, although likely with a few crumbs, we are done. If not, a few more minutes should do the trick.
If you give this Cranberry Cornbread a try, share it with us over on Instagram @theveryhungrycrafter. We can’t wait to hear from you!
Cranberry Cornbread
Ingredients
- 145 grams all-purpose flour ~1 cup
- 145 grams corn meal ~1 cup
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 100 grams sugar ~½ cup
- 246 grams milk ~1 cup
- 1 egg large
- 57 grams neutral oil ~¼ cup
- 2 tbs maple syrup
- 140 grams cranberries rinsed; ~1¼ cup or 5 oz
Instructions
- Let's get ready! Preheat that oven to 400°F. Lightly grease an 8"x8" baking dish.
- Chop your cranberries. This can be a battle but a bread knife will be your friend in attempting to hold those runaway berries.
- Mix together dry ingredients: flour, cornmeal, salt, baking powder, sugar.
- Mix together wet ingredients: milk, oil, egg, maple syrup.
- Toss cranberries in the dry mix to coat.
- Add wet mix to dry and stir just until blended.
- Pour into prepped pan and place in well preheated oven. Bake 30 – 35 minutes or until toothpick test is dry.
- Cool for at least 10 minutes and enjoy!
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