Orange Honey Bread

I spent the weekend in Florida with my mom, dad and two sisters, and thought it'd be fun to have a guest blog or two, since basically everybody in my family cooks. 

My sister is very into healthy eating, and especially healthy baking. I can't remember the exact number she's lost, but I think it's around 20 pounds through tracking what she eats and balancing her intake with exercise. The point is, she still eats what she wants, just not as much of it, so you can totally bake your heart out as long as you're smart about it.

Here's what you'll need to make Michelle's orange honey bread:

2 tbsp. Smart Balance Buttery Spread (or substitute butter)

1 cup honey

2 egg whites from large eggs

2 tsp. orange zest

2 cups white flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour (you can add another 1/2 cup of white flour if you don't have whole wheat)

2 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

6 fluid oz. fresh squeezed orange juice (you can get both this and the orange zest from about 2 oranges)

1/8 tsp. vanilla extract

1/16 tsp. lemon extract

Preheat the oven to 325 and grease and flour a bread tin. The one we used was 9 inches. 

Cut your oranges in half and juice, making sure if it has seeds they do not get in the fluid. It's okay if the pulp does. 

Then take what's left of the orange and grate the peel to get 2 tsps. of zest. 

Add the butter to a mixing bowl, add honey and blend until smooth. 

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until foamy but not stiff, about 2 minutes. This will make your bread lighter and fluffier. Add the orange zest to the egg whites and blend. Add the orange juice, vanilla extract and lemon extract to the egg white mix.

In a separate bowl, sift all dry ingredients together: white flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. 

Alternating as you go, mix the dry ingredients bowl and the egg mixture into the honey and butter mix until all ingredients are fully blended. 

You may have to scrape the underside of the bowl to make sure all flour is blended in. 

Blended and tasting good!

Then place mixture into the bread tin. This bread bakes at a pretty low temperature, 325, because the honey would otherwise burn, so be careful if your oven tends to run high. Michelle baked the cake for 60 minutes, when a toothpick came out cleanly. 

The result was a very moist, summery cake. And for a person, like myself, who prefers the flavor of white flour, the 1/2 cup whole wheat flour taste was barely there, completely overtaken by the blend of orange and honey. I really liked using this bread as a breakfast bread, toasting it and putting melted butter on top. 

If you cut the bread into 12 slices, it's 204 calories per slice, with only 1.8 grams of fat, 25 grams of sugar, and 8 mg of Vitamin C.