Orange Glazed Cranberry Bread

This moist & flavorful orange cranberry bread is packed with orange zest and tart cranberries, topped with cinnamon streusel, and finished with orange glaze. It’s one of my favorite quick bread recipes to prepare because it always draws a crowd!

When I think of the fall season, many flavor duos come to mind, but no flavor combination is more delicious than orange + cranberry. I love tart cranberries paired with sunshine-sweet orange. Over the years I’ve shared recipes for cranberry orange muffins, cranberry orange Bundt cake, cranberry orange icebox cookies, and cranberry orange scones… and my classic cranberry sauce and these cranberry brie puff pastry tarts both contain a pop of orange flavor, too. All incredible, but nothing rivals today’s quick bread. It’s the original and I recommend making two loaves because trust me, it will disappear quickly!

3 Parts to Orange Cranberry Bread

1. Bread: I use buttermilk and vegetable oil here to ensure a supremely moist and flavorful bread.
2. Streusel: Homemade cinnamon streusel comes together with simple everyday ingredients and is a welcome addition to this quick bread. You’ll love the textural variation in each bite. While I believe streusel is never optional, this bread is still dazzling without!
3. Orange Glaze: A drizzle of orange glaze on top heightens the bright orange flavor of this orange cranberry bread.

Craving plain cranberry bread? You can leave off the streusel and/or orange glaze. Same bake time and temperature. Or if you want to add some sparkle, try adding some sugared cranberries on top before serving.

Cranberry Bread Ingredients

Don’t be overwhelmed by the ingredient list below—you’ll notice most of the ingredients are repeated in each part of the recipe.

• Flour: All-purpose flour is the base of this quick bread recipe. Because we’re loading it up with lots of add-ins, we need a sturdy flour.
• Baking Soda: Baking soda helps the bread rise.
• Salt + Vanilla Extract: Salt and vanilla extract add flavor. (Try using homemade vanilla extract.)
• Cranberries: We use 1 cup of chopped cranberries. I recommend using fresh or frozen cranberries, though dried cranberries will also work. If using frozen cranberries, do not thaw. If you have leftovers, try my cranberry cardamom spice muffins next!
• Pecans or Walnuts: While optional, chopped nuts are a wonderful addition and complement the flavors of the bread. I always use them! If you love the combination of cranberries and pecans, you must try my cranberry cake as well.
• Egg: One egg binds everything together.
• Sugar: We use both brown sugar and granulated sugar to sweeten this bread.
• Buttermilk: We use buttermilk for added moisture, but also because the lactic acid in buttermilk is what helps the baking soda do its job. Want to use sour cream and milk instead? You definitely can. See my cinnamon swirl quick bread, which is another favorite recipe of mine. This bread batter recipe is similar and you can use 1/3 cup sour cream and 2/3 cup whole milk here too.
• Oil: While butter provides unbelievable flavor, nothing beats the moisture that oil brings. We use oil in this quick bread recipe to produce a moist and soft bread, and also because the flavor of butter would get lost with all of the other flavors.
• Orange Zest: Orange zest adds a lovely punch of flavor to the bread. Save the juice for the orange glaze!

How to Make Orange Glazed Cranberry Bread

1. Make the streusel. Use your hands, two forks, or a pastry cutter to cut the cold butter into the other streusel ingredients. The colder the butter, the less likely the streusel will sink down into the cooking bread.
2. Make the batter. Mix the dry ingredients together in one bowl and the wet ingredients together in another. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until no lumps remain. No electric mixer needed!
3. Pour into prepared pan. Top with streusel.
4. Bake. This bread can take anywhere from 45 minutes to over an hour in the oven. Why the huge gap of time? All ovens are different. Oven air flows, oven hot spots, etc. Quick breads are thick and having the center baked through properly takes time.
5. Make the glaze. Combine ingredients together and drizzle over cooled bread.
6. Slice, serve, and enjoy!

Similar to banana bread and carrot cake, this bread was even more flavorful and moist on day 2. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love it warm out of the oven, but I especially enjoy it the next morning. It’s a perfect treat to serve guests because you can make it the evening before.

Two Baking Tips

1. Buy an oven thermometer. Unless you have a brand new or regularly calibrated oven, your oven’s temperature is likely inaccurate. Incorrect temperature ruins baked goods and you waste hours spent on the recipe and money spent on ingredients. The inexpensive remedy to this mess is an oven thermometer. While cheap, they’re irreplaceable in a baker’s kitchen. Place it in your oven so you always know the actual temperature.
2. Cover your bread with aluminum foil. I note this in the instructions below as a reminder. About halfway through baking, loosely cover the loaf with aluminum foil. This will allow your bread to bake evenly on all sides and prevent the top from getting too brown before the center bakes through.

If you’re looking for another fall quick bread recipe, this apple cinnamon bread is a tried-and-true favorite.

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Quick Bread Recipes

I welcome easy recipes around the holidays. What I love most about quick breads is that they’re universally delicious and, best of all, they’re QUICK! Here are a few seasonal quick bread recipes to make next:

• Harvest Spice Bread
• Banana Bread
• Spiced Gingerbread Loaf
• Pumpkin Bread
• Carrot Cake Loaf

See all of my quick bread recipes.