Cranberry Nut Bread

I found this recipe on the Internet & made it for our Christmas dinner. I also just had to make it again for the New Year. :-)  This bread was very easy to make. It has a great flavor that is similar to a fruit cake & the cranberries give it that little zing. Enjoy!

Oven Temp: 350 degrees         Prep Time: 10 min                   Baking time: 50-60 min
Serves: 12 (2 loaves, or you could make mini loaves)

Ingredients

• 2 cups fresh/frozen cranberries, chopped
• 1 2/3 cups sugar
• 2/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons grated lemon or orange rind
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 4 eggs
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts or pecans (or dates it you do not like nuts)
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350º.
2. Grease bottoms only of 2 loaf pans, 8 1/2 × 4 1/2 × 2 1/2 inches or 9 × 5 × 3 inches.
3. Mix cranberries, sugar, oil, milk, grated rind, vanilla and eggs in large bowl.
4. Stir in remaining ingredients.
5. Pour into pans.
6. Bake 50 to 60 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
7. Cool 10 minutes.
8. Loosen sides of loaves from pans; remove from pans.
9. Cool completely on wire rack before slicing.
10. Store tightly wrapped in refrigerator up to 1 week.

Note: You can change ingredients to have it suit your own taste. This bread can be easily frozen if you do not want both loaves or just make a half of a batch (As I did with my second batch).

Happy Birthday Minnie Mouse Cake

Mini Minnie's:
I created these by dipping Mini Oreo Cookies in chocolate. The ears are made using black Gumpaste that is rolled out, cut into small circles & inserted into the dipped Mini Oreo Cookies. The mini bow's are made with red Gumpaste and are attached with edible glue.

The large Minnie Mouse ears & bow are made using fondant & Gumpaste. I inserted a toothpick into the large Minnie Mouse ears so they could be attached to the Minnie Mouse head. Edible glue was used to assemble the red bow & to attach the white dots.

One half of a round cake is added to the corner of this cake as the base for Minnie's head. Fondant will be added for the face to come alive.The cakes are a yellow cake with mini chocolate chips added for fun. The icing is vanilla Buttercream.

The finished cake - Minnie Mouse is peeking out of the cake. I ran out of time on this one as I intended to add arms on each side of the face with gloved hands. Minnie Mouse would have looked like she was crawling on the edge of this cake.