Orange Honey Nut Bread #recipe @LeslieBudewitz

LESLIE: My handwritten note card credits the original of this recipe to the Bay and Ocean Cookbook: Recipes from the Ark Restaurant, by Nanci Main and Jimella Lucas. The Ark, now gone, was a popular place on the Washington Coast, lauded by James Beard, among others. I never ate there, so I suspect I found the recipe in a Seattle newspaper or I borrowed the cookbook from a bookstore I worked in while I was a college student in Seattle.

In the umpteen years since then, this quickbread has become a household a fave, though I always think of it in spring, perhaps because of the citrus and honey. It was a hit at Easter Brunch, with Mr. Right's Eggs Romanoff  and bacon. And a strawberry, just because.

I was taught that baking temperatures should be reduced for glass and time watched closely. Turns out that this is true – glass heats up more slowly, but conducts heat more evenly than metal. For that reason, Chowhound recommends metal pans for bread – too late, as my large loaf pans are all glass! But my minis are metal – go figure. So, use what you have and pay attention.

Congratulations to my blog sisters with new releases: Cleo Coyle, SHOT IN THE DARK, Coffeehouse Mystery #17 (Penguin Random House), Denise Swanson, TART OF DARKNESS,  Chef-to-Go #1 (Sourcebooks), and Peg Cochran, BERRIED AT SEA, Cranberry Cove #4 (Beyond the Page). 

Orange Honey Nut Bread

3/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
3/4 cup orange juice (one large orange)
3 cups all-purpose flour
2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cop chopped walnuts or pecans
1-1/2 tablespoons grated orange peel (one large orange)

Heat oven to 350 degrees for a metal pan, 325 degrees for a glass pan.

Grease your loaf pans (one large or two small).

In a mixer bowl, cream the honey and butter on medium speed for one minute. Add the egg and mix. Stir in the orange juice.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add gradually to the honey mixture. Stir in the nuts and orange peel.

Bake 50-55 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. If you made two loaves, let cool completely,  wrap the second loaf well, and freeze.

Makes one full-sized or two small loaf pans.

Enjoy!

From the cover of AS THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE CRUMBLES, Food Lovers' Village Mystery #5 (Midnight Ink, June 2018, available for pre-order now):  

In Jewel Bay---Montana's Christmas Village---all is merry and bright. At Murphy’s Mercantile, AKA the Merc, manager Erin Murphy is ringing in the holiday season with food, drink, and a new friend: Merrily Thornton. A local girl gone wrong, Merrily’s turned her life around. But her parents have publicly shunned her, and they nurse a bitterness that chills Erin.

When Merrily goes missing and her boss discovers he’s been robbed, fingers point to Merrily—until she’s found dead, a string of lights around her neck. The clues and danger snowball from there. Can Erin nab the killer—and keep herself in one piece—in time for a special Christmas Eve?

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries and the Spice Shop Mysteries—and the first author to win Agatha Awards for both fiction and nonfiction. A past president of Sisters in Crime, she lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

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