Cranberry Bread Baking

Ingredients assembled and mixed.

Cranberry chopping station.

Bread pans filled and ready to go in the oven.

Eight loaves of goodness baking!

The first four loaves cooling on the cooktop.

Now we're up to eight loaves.

The grand finale (for yesterday morning's baking, that is)

16 loaves of cranberry goodness!

Here's a few, tagged and beribboned,

ready to bless friends and neighbors.

I am known in these parts for baking and giving away large quantities of cranberry bread. I usually bake and give away about 80 loaves. Add in a dozen or so extra loaves for my family to consume and I'm pushing 100 loaves of that wonderful baked treat!

The girls used to say, "Mom, you're not going to make cranberry bread again, are you? Everyone is probably getting tired of it!" In reality, people began asking them (hopefully), "Is your mom making cranberry bread again this year? We love it!" That's when they realized that perhaps their mother was on to something. Let's face it, nothing beats warm cranberry bread with a cup of hot tea on a cold winter's day.

This year I decided to simplify my life a great deal by ordering disposable aluminum baking pans and clear plastic lids for each pan from webstaurant.com. What a treat! No more endless washing of bread pans. I love it! Although, I still bake our personal loaves in the bread pans, but that pales in comparison to the number of loaves I bake for others, so it really has made a difference in my workload.

I've gotten to the point that I won't even pull my trusty KitchenAid mixer out unless I can do four batches. Once the ingredients are out and the oven is warm, I'd rather keep at it. I've got a few baking marathons ahead of me between now and Christmas, good thing I'm efficient!