ORANGE CRANBERRY TEA CAKE

I just adore cranberries and can't resist making an Orange Cranberry Tea Cake about this time each year.  This cake is a tea cake in the truest sense of the word because it has TEA in the cake!

I like to double this recipe and make 2 cakes.  You will need:

1 1/4 cups water, 1 cup orange juice, 4 tea bags/black tea, 3 cups of flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 cup sugar, 4 Tb soft butter, 2 eggs, 1 cup chopped cranberries, 1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour your cake pan.  In a small saucepan, bring the water and juice to a boil. Drop in the 5 teabags, remove from burner and let brew 5 minutes. Remove tea bags from liquid.

In another bowl, combine the flour, soda and salt.  In a large mixer bowl, mix sugar and butter until blended.  Beat in  the eggs and cooled tea mixture.  Add the flour and soda mixture until blended and stir in the chopped cranberries and walnuts.  (In high altitude add a little more orange juice if batter is too dry)

Turn batter into a large loaf pan or tube pan and bake 50-60 minutes testing with a toothpick.  Cool when done.  Turn out cake and brush with orange juice and sift with confectioners sugar.

This past week we have had cold weather and light snow on several days.  It has been so pretty and put me in the mood for Christmas music in the background.  Baking this cake is sure to put you in the Holiday mood! I doubled this recipe making one larger and one smaller cake which gave me one to take to my new neighbors.  I also got an opportunity to pull out many of my Christmas decorations.