Willie's Orange Bread

 

 

I have a hard time getting cleaning and organizing done. I know I’m not alone in this because I was talking to a friend the other day who had decided to organize her closet, found an old box of knitting, abandoned the closet altogether, and made herself a sweater instead. 

As I mentioned last week when I shared my Halloween stitching project, I’ve been digging around in my personal archives lately, bringing out old projects to finish and rediscovering recipes I’ve saved over the years. There is something wonderfully dangerous about opening a box of old things. You never know what you’re going to find, or what you’re going to abandon your current project to do.

  I know there is a great deal of interest these days in digitizing recipes, and I certainly understand why. But to me, there is nothing quite as charming as a handwritten recipe, particularly when that handwriting is fifty years old. Yes, fifty. Even as I write that, I’m having a moment. One of my recent discoveries was a recipe for an orange quick bread from the early 1970s. It was a morning bread that I always remembered enjoying, and there, tucked away among my personal archives, was the original recipe. My mother had received it from her friend Willie Schebelen (Willie was short for Willisdean) about five years before Willie passed away.

 The recipe itself is simple, but the memories it stirred up were anything but. The moment I took that first bite, I was transported straight back to the seventies. Suddenly I could hear the high school band playing and the cheerleaders cheering for the team. I could hear my friends splashing as they jumped into the lake, and I could almost taste the greasy goodness of burgers from the local drive-in.

Funny how food can do that. A taste, a smell, a particular texture, and suddenly you’re not standing in your kitchen anymore. You’re sixteen again, sitting somewhere you haven’t thought about in years, surrounded by people and sounds and places that you thought you’d forgotten.

I don’t suppose baking this loaf will transport you quite so dramatically. Unless, of course, you also happened to spend your formative years in the seventies eating orange bread and hanging around drive-ins. But I think you’ll enjoy it anyway. 

It’s a lovely, old-fashioned quick bread, studded with raisins and pecans and fragrant with orange. And if you happen to have a handwritten recipe tucked away in a box somewhere, perhaps this will inspire you to dig it out. Just be careful.

You might start cleaning out a closet and end up baking a loaf of bread…or making a sweater. 

Willie’s Orange Bread

 1 c. orange freshly squeezed juice

1 c. raisins

½ c. chopped pecans

1 beaten egg

2 t. vanilla

¼ t. salt

2 c. flour

1 t. baking powder

1 t. baking soda

1 c. sugar

2 T. butter

1 T. grated orange rind

 Cream the butter and sugar, then mix in the beaten egg. In a separate bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients until well combined. Stir the wet and dry mixtures together until just blended. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake at 350°F for about 50 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.

Enjoy every nostalgic bite.

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