I've been thinking about my maternal grandmother (1902-1999) recently, and I've decided to post a few of her best recipes. I'm starting with her Orange Bread. This is good hot out of the oven, but it's equally good cold from the fridge. Spread on a little butter or oleo and you'll have trouble keeping down to one slice. I don't know where she found this recipe, but, even though it takes a good while to produce one little loaf, it's a keeper.
Grandma's Orange Bread
Peel 3 oranges; save peel. Chop peel fine. (Each chunk of peel should be about the size of a Cheerio.)
Boil chopped peel in salted water until tender (about 10 minutes.) Drain water, add 1 and 1/2 C. sugar and 1 T. water. Cook slowly over low heat, stirring occasionally. Sugar will turn into a syrup; cook 'til clear, then set aside to cool. (I speed up the cooling by letting it pour into a pie tin.)
Next, the batter: 3/4 C. sugar, 1 T melted butter or oleo, 2 well-beaten eggs, 1 C. milk, 3 and 1/2 C. flour, 3 t. baking powder. Combine these in the order given, stir til well-mixed. Add peel mixture and stir again. Put in greased loaf pan (I use a 5" x 3" x 8" pan.)
To create a crust, pour a little extra milk on top of raw batter and sprinkle sugar (maybe 2 T. total) onto the milk.
Bake at 325 for an hour. (This is the tricky part, because her recipe adds, "Test with a toothpick, and let it bake if toothpick shows uncooked batter." I have had loaves that required an extra ten minutes, and once it took an extra twenty minutes to get the deepest part of the loaf baked. Don't know why there's so much variance, but there is. Trust that toothpick.)
Yes, there's a lot of sugar in this, so I don't make it a lot. If anyone tries this and gets good results, I'd like to hear about it.
