Brunch Fare

I love brunch. I love brunch foods like muffins and scones and quiches. I love the mix of sweet and savory dishes.

I had some great ladies over for brunch this morning. Despite the flies that invited themselves to the party, we had a great time.


My brunch menu consisted of two quiches (spinach/tomato and apple/cheddar), blackberry scones, mini muffin cinnamon donuts, salad with blackberry vinaigrette dressing, fruit, coffee and friendship tea. I'll share them all eventually, but today I'll share the recipe for the friendship tea.

I'm not sure where this recipe came from. It was on a card in my recipe box. I found it while poking through, looking for something else. It sounded good, and I had everything I needed, so I thought I'd make up a batch.  I'm glad I did! It was great. I kept it hot, but it would have been great iced, especially for summer. It would be great in the winter for a nice holiday drink, too.

Friendship Tea:

2 1/2 cups cranberry juice

1 1/2 cups water

1 cup orange juice

1/4 cup sugar

1 cinnamon stick

4 whole cloves

6 black tea bags

Combine all ingredients except tea bags in a medium sized saucepan and brink to a boil.  Remove from heat and add the tea bags. Steep for 5 minutes. Remove the tea bags and spices. Pour into a carafe or serve straight from the stove.

This tea made my kitchen smell SO good and it tasted amazing. I will definitely be making this again. And probably soon, because I still have all the ingredients to make another batch. Enjoy!

Cranberry Orange Yeast Bread

That's right, cranberry orange bread that is not a quick bread.

I had a urge to use my bread machine today.  The one I got for $10 on a local trading site: www.bookoo.com.  It was practically brand new and I have gotten my money out of it, easily, in the less than a month I have had it.

So with my sweet tooth aching and really wanting cinnamon raisin bread and not having any raisins in the house, I found a recipe for cranberry orange bread at this site.  Although, once I found this site, I had to narrow my choices down since there are so many tempting bread recipes on there.

Recipe Directions (I made a 1 lb loaf since it's just me and my munchkin eating it):

=== SMALL LOAF - 1 lb MACHINE === 2/3 cup milk -- room temperature 1 egg -- beaten 1 tablespoon butter or margarine 2 cups bread flour homestyle white flour 1 tablespoon sugar 1 1/2 teaspoon grated orange rind 3/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup dried cranberries 1 1/2 teaspoon bread machine yeast === LARGE LOAF - 1 1/2 to 2 lb MACHINE === 1 cup milk -- room temperature 1 egg -- beaten 1 tablespoon butter or margarine 3 cups bread flour homestyle white flour 1 tablespoon sugar 2 teaspoon grated orange rind 1 teaspoon salt 3/4 cup dried cranberries 2 teaspoon bread machine yeast Select loaf size. Add ingredients to machine in listed order. Select WHITE cycle. This recipe yields 1 loaf. So, you can do this in the bread machine from start to finish, but I like to do just the dough cycle and then bake in the oven.  I like the size of a loaf from a loaf pan better and all the real work is done for me by the bread machine, so it's not that hard.  So I set all the ingredients in this morning, set the dough cycle, left to go grocery shopping and came home to dough ready to put in the loaf pan, rise and bake.  I baked it on 375 for 35 minutes and it was perfect.  Easy (and yummy-even the munchkin agreed!) I think that next, I am going to have to make the dried tomato and rosemary bread