Finding the tangerine-colored lining

So, I have some tangerines that aren’t very fun to eat by themselves due to some peel/overwhelming seed issues, as you may recall. Although I am frugal and hate to waste food, if the flavor of the fruit was bad, I might chalk them up to being a total loss and give up. But it’s not. The flavor is actually quite splendid, which makes my dismay about massacring them just to get a section of fruit that much more acute because I know they have potential to be great. Just not as part of my lunch.

So, I set to work on finding a solution to this predicament, and I have to say, I nailed it. One of my favorite foods in the whole wide world is lemon-poppy bread/muffins, and that sweet, citrusy bread became my muse for this delectable piece of baking. I started off looking at this recipe, then much like a Disney executive, I took that idea and changed a whole bunch of things. Like, I cut the ingredients in half. Then I replaced the milk with tangerine juice. And most of the oil with applesauce (which I had never done before and was a bit hesitant, as a side note, but it was a totally perfect lower-fat substitution). And some of the regular flour with wheat flour. Then I baked it and topped the finished bread with a sugary, citrusy glaze. Ahem. So kind of like how Newsies (best movie ever — thanks Disney!) was “inspired by” actual newsboys at the turn of the century, my bread was inspired by this recipe and my own fervent desire to use these tangerines.

To be honest, the citrus flavor in this bread could be even stronger — if you have lemon extract, I would recommend subbing that for the vanilla, but the finished product still managed to be perfectly moist, subtly sweet and 100-percent addictive. I’ve eaten half of the loaf in two days and am already cursing myself for halving this recipe.

And, not that it matters when food is this good, but as a special bonus, you can know this recipe is totally easy and about as foolproof as bread gets.

Not bad for something I worried that I had substituted into certain failure

Kristin’s Tangerine-Poppy Bread

Inspired by Poppy Seed Bread from allrecipes.com

Makes one loaf

Ingredients

For bread:

• 1/2 Tsp. salt
• 1/8 cup poppy seeds (basically, to taste)
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 Tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 Tsp. vanilla extract (or lemon extract)
• 1/2 cup tangerine juice (approximately one tangerine, juiced)

For glaze:

• 3 or 4 Tbsp. tangerine juice (about 1/2 tangerine, juiced)
• 1 or 2 Tbsp. sugar

Directions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease and flour one 9 x 5 inch loaf pans.

Mix the flour, salt and soda in a mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, mix the vanilla, tangerine juice, sugar, eggs, applesauce and oil. Slowly add the flour mixture to the liquid mixture, stirring by hand until ingredients are fully incorporated, but do not over-mix.

Stir in the poppy seeds. Pour batter into loaf pans.

Bake for about 50 minutes. While loaf is cooling, poke it many times (at least 20) with a toothpick to create small holes in the bread. Over low to medium heat, stir the remaining tangerine juice and sugar until the sugar is fully dissolved. To make a thicker glaze, add a bit more sugar. After the juice starts to simmer, remove from heat and pour over bread. After the bread cools a bit, top with additional sugar (raw sugar crystals work well) if you would like a bit of crunch on top of the bread.

Last but not least, enjoy eating something that did not frustrate the hell out of you.

Nom nom nom

Tags: Baking, bread, citrus, easy, tangerine

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 18th, 2010 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Adventurous Cooking, Baking, Desserts, Savings/Shortcuts, Vegetarian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.