Vegan Orange Clementine Quick Bread

This bread made a wonderful breakfast snack!

This is a gift-sized vegan orange clementine loaf baked to perfection!

Orange was a favorite food "color" of mine when I was growing up. Or maybe it was my mother's. I just know that orange food stuffs seemed to make an appearance in my home quite often. I was sick a lot as a child--I had asthma so bad that I'd end up in the hospital, missing school and being put back together with cold orange drinks and cold orange food. My mother used to keep orange Kool Aid in the fridge on a regular basis. Orange sherbert, oranges, orange Tang (now I am showing my age), orange popsicles, orange Jell-o, even orange Flintstone vitamins. It was all out orange for curing just about any problem I ever had. Fortunately for me, my taste for orange never went away. I love the smell of citrus--both orange and lemon flavors. I guess I equate this with my childhood and remarkable healing properties it offered me as I was mending. To this day, for my Gatorade thirst quenching after a run--I look for the orange bottle.

The citrus season is upon us--I love it! Coincidentally, so are the holidays. Oh, and BTW, you can now purchase those cute bread tins for less than a buck right now--great gift holders! There is no better time in the world to look for citrus jewels to pop up in your grocery stores. Most prominently are the clementines. I love these things--and you have to buy them in super huge quantities to get the best brands--so why not make bread from them! So when I saw a recipe in Martha Stewart's November issue for a Clementine Quick Bread, well, I just had, HAD to try it--only creating my own version, and, making it vegan. Martha's recipe called for several things that I modified. For instance, she asked for two vanilla bean pods scraped--well, these are quite pricey, so I just used one, then added a bit of almond extract and more vanilla extract to compensate for the differnce. Also, she uses heavy cream, I use soy buttermilk. I played with a few more things--like not using ten clementines--I subbed with a bit of orange juice--I am cheap that way. But this did not affect the flavor of this wonderful, moist bread one bit!

Vegan Orange Clementine Quick Bread

6 clementine oranges
3/4 cup soy milk mixed with 3/4 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 cup orange juice
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick Earth Balance Butter
1 1/4 cups Florida Crystals or sugar
1 vanilla bean pod, cut open and scraped
3 teaspoons Ener-G Egg Replacer mixed with 4 tablespoons warm water

Preheat oven to 350 and lightly spray one 9 x 5 loaf pan or two of the smaller aluminum loaf pans for gifts. First, place 3/4 soy milk plus apple cider vinegar together in a small bowl and set aside to create your magical vegan buttermilk! Next, prep your Ener-G Egg Replacer together with water, whisking well, then setting aside. Place dry ingredients in a bowl: flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt and set aside. Place cut up pieces of Earth Balance pieces in a separate bowl with sugar and scraped vanilla bean mixture--mix with hand blender until nice and fluffy--about 2-3 minutes. Next, add to this bowl the zest of 4 clementines--blend again. Next, add the Ener-G Egg Replacer 1/4 cup at a time to this fluffy butter mixture. Mix well. Juice the zested clementines and place in a separate bowl--which will give you almost half a cup. To get to 3/4 cup of juice, add about a 1/4 cup of orange juice. Now, take a 1/4 cup of this juice mixture and place in a small bowl. Next, add to this juice your vegan buttermilk, vanilla extract and almond extract--mix well and set aside. Take remaining 2 clementines and peel and remove pith and cut up into segments and set segments aside in a bowl. Now, add to the butter mixture altenating amounts of flour mixture and buttermilk mixture--beginning and ending with flour mixture. Blend this on low speed. Next, fold in the clementine pieces. Pour the mixture into your loaf or double pans evenly--bake for approximately 40 minutes for two smaller loaf sizes, and for 50-55 minutes for 1 loaf pan. Look for the tops of the loaves to brown a bit. While these are baking, take remaining orange/clementine juice and add 1/2 cup sugar to it in a small pan. Bring to a boil, then let simmer about 5 minutes, remove from heat. This will be the glaze you will use over the bread once it comes out of the oven. When the bread is finished baking (test with a knife inserted in the middle for doneness)--set on a cooling rack. After about five minutes, brush with the orange/sugar mixture. Let bread cool completely, brush some more and place in fridge overnight. This bread gets better the longer it sits. If your giving as a gift--I would keep in the aluminum loaf pan and gift it that way. It is terrific for breakfast! Moist and very orangey!