Cranberry Cheese Bread

Home from Columbia, and the house feels different — not emptier but expanded, because the expansion is not in the house but in the heart, and the heart has grown a room for Will, and the room is permanent, and the permanence is the grandchild.

I have been writing for RecipeSpinoff about the birth — the blog post about the she-crab soup I made the night I became a grandmother, the post about the holding and the cooking and the particular way that food marks the milestones of a life. The post received more responses than any post I have written: women writing back about their own grandchildren, their own kitchens, their own mothers who cooked and who are gone and who live in the recipes that the grandchildren will someday taste.

Carrie called from UGA. She screamed when she heard about Will (the Carrie review, consistent across all good news). She said, "I\'m an aunt." The sentence was both fact and identity, and the identity is the new room in Carrie\'s heart, the room that holds a nephew she has not yet met but who is already loved, because the love in this family precedes the meeting.

I made she-crab soup — the Sunday soup, the grandmother\'s soup now, the soup that I will make for Will when he is old enough to eat it, and the making-for-Will is the future, and the future is the soup.

The she-crab soup is the soup of that night, of the becoming — but the days after a birth ask for something you can carry to a table, slice, and pass around, something that says celebration without requiring explanation. I made this cranberry cheese bread the morning after I came home from Columbia, because the tartness of the cranberries and the richness of the cheese felt exactly right for a moment that holds both tenderness and joy, and because Will is going to need a grandmother who bakes bread, and I intend to be that grandmother.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 60 min | Total Time: 1 hr 15 min | Servings: 12

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup fresh or frozen cranberries, coarsely chopped
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 large egg, beaten
3/4 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 tablespoon orange zest

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x5-inch loaf pan and set aside.
Combine dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt until evenly mixed.
Add cranberries and cheese. Stir the chopped cranberries and shredded cheddar into the dry ingredients, tossing to coat each piece lightly with flour so they don’t sink during baking.
Mix wet ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the beaten egg, orange juice, melted butter, and orange zest.
Combine. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold gently with a spatula until just combined — do not overmix; a few streaks of flour are fine.
Bake. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and spread evenly. Bake for 55–65 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the top is deep golden brown.
Cool. Let the bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely before slicing. The flavors sharpen as it cools.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cranberry Cheese Bread — The Loaf I’ll Bake When Will Is Ready to Eat