A Most Compelling Tea Bread.

 

When my eyes first graced the instructions of this seemingly bizarre recipe, I naively assumed that it was some form of holiday bread reserved for the warmer months, a counterpart to the German Stollen if you will. I also never knew of Zinfandel either prior to this, a variant of red and/or white wine whose sweetness offsets the obligatory tartness that often defines the alcoholic beverage. When it came time to taste the fruit of my labors, I was pleasantly surprised by what entered my mouth. The walnuts, despite not being toasted, provided a well needed crunch, and the underlying taste of Zinfandel added a sort of tart sweetness that I have seldom experienced elsewhere. The only wrench in the works was the cranberries. We live in a society where cranberries are only viewed as a thanksgiving commodity and nothing more, as a result, dried cranberries are the only resource one has when looking for something of that nature. The dried berries added an unwanted chewiness that clashed with every other texture my creation had to offer, but in all other aspects, it was better than expected. It was far from perfect, (although nothing ever is) and since then I have searched for ways to improve the fruit of my labors. Substituting dry cranberries for raw or frozen ones is the first, most obvious change, but again, those can be quite illusive. The inclusion of Garam Masala is also a choice that I think adds much needed flavor in order to incentivize improvement. 

Ingredients:

4 cups all-purpose flour

2 Eggs

¼ cup vegetable or canola oil

1½ cups sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 tablespoon Garam Masala or Ras el Hanut

1 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

1½  to 2 cups cranberries (ideally raw or frozen. Use dried cranberries if you have no other option)

1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

¼ cup white Zinfandel 

¼ cup buttermilk 

Preheat the oven to 350. In a large bowl, whisk together the oil and eggs. Once whisked, mix in the flour until the mixture resembles coarse sand. Add in the sugar, salt, baking powder and soda, as well as the garam masala and mix again. Next, fold in the cranberries and walnuts before adding the orange juice, buttermilk and Zinfandel. I don’t need to tell you to mix again do I? 

Transfer the mixture to one heavily buttered loaf pan (or two, it depends on the size). Place the loaf pan in the oven and bake for roughly an hour until the top springs back. Insert a stick or some sort of probe into the loaf to determine if it needs to be baked a little bit longer (you’ll know if anything sticks to it). Remove from the oven and allow to cool. Then remove from the loaf pan and serve.