Applesauce Cranberry Bread Recipe

This applesauce bread recipe is delicious & easy to make. It combines sweet applesauce with slightly tangy cranberries in order to create a wonderful snack or dessert.

Moist & Delicious Applesauce Cranberry Bread

Recipe Sections

1. Ingredients
2. Instructions
3. Helpful Tips

Recipe Rating 5 from 20 votes Featured Comment Alice “This applesauce bread was really good. I wanted to try something different from banana breads so I was glad that you mentioned it as an easy alternative.”

As you probably know, applesauce bread is a type of sweet “quick bread” (similar to banana bread and pumpkin bread). Quick breads use baking soda and/or baking powder as a leavening agent (versus sandwich-type breads that use slow rising yeast). Quick breads are usually a sweeter muffin-like “bread” that is often eaten as a dessert.

Applesauce is often used as an easy substitute if someone has run out of bananas and is unable to make a banana bread. The lack of available bananas encourages people to try out applesauce bread recipes (which are very similar to banana breads… well except the banana part!). Moreover, since applesauce usually comes in a sealed container, it can be stored for far longer than fresh bananas. Therefore, applesauce is often more readily available as a pantry “backup” ingredient versus driving to the supermarket for bananas… in the middle of a snowstorm. Of course, people tend to forget about any missing bananas… after they discover how good applesauce bread tastes!

A Key Ingredient – Applesauce

Please be aware that this is an oven-baked recipe. It is not made with a bread machine. FYI – You will also find a printable and “pin-able” recipe at the bottom of this page.

Ingredients – Applesauce Bread Recipe

• 1 1/4 Cups – Applesauce – 290 milliliters
• 8 Tablespoons – Unsalted Butter (softened) – 115 grams
• 2 – Large Eggs – Not extra large or jumbo eggs
• 1 Cup – White Granulated Sugar – 200 grams
• 1/4 Cup – Light Brown Sugar (packed cup) – 54 grams
• 2 Cups – Flour (all purpose flour) – 240 grams
• 1 Teaspoon – Vanilla Extract – 5 milliliters
• 1 Teaspoon – Baking Soda – 5 grams
• 1 Teaspoon – Baking Powder – 4 grams
• 1/2 Teaspoon – Salt – 3 grams
• 1 1/2 Cups – Cranberries (fresh) – 150 grams

Servings – Roughly 12 slices

Equipment – Measuring cup & spoons, mixing bowl, long wooden spoon, 9 by 5 metal bread pan, oven mitts, silicon spatula, cooling rack and an oven.

Stir Cranberries into the Applesauce Bread Batter

Instructions – Applesauce Bread Recipe

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
• Soften butter in a microwave.
• Stir the applesauce, butter, eggs and sugar together in a large mixing bowl.
• Mix in remaining ingredients (except the cranberries). Stir until the batter is fully mixed.
• Add the cranberries after the batter has been completely mixed. Make sure the cranberries are evenly spread throughout the batter.
• Grease bread pan (if necessary).
• Pour finished batter into a nonstick bread pan. Smooth out the top of the batter within the bread pan.
• Bake in the oven for 65-70 minutes at 325 F or until golden brown.
• Take out of oven and let the applesauce bread cool down in the bread pan for 10 minutes. Do not remove the applesauce bread from the bread pan during this 10 minute cool down period. Use oven mitts as the bread pan will be very hot coming out of the oven.
• After 10 minutes, remove the applesauce bread from the bread pan. Place the applesauce bread on a cooling rack in order to completely cool. This cool down may take 1-2 hours. Gently slide a silicon spatula between the applesauce bread and the bread pan walls if the bread is stuck in the pan.
• Please read the tips section below for extra information on how to make this recipe successfully & to avoid common quick bread problems.

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Pour Applesauce Bread Batter into Bread Pan

Tips – Applesauce Bread Recipe

• The tips below are designed to help quick bread “novices” and/or people with limited baking experience.
• Click on this “print recipe” link if you want to print out this recipe. It includes all of the recipe’s ingredients and instructions. However, the recipe print function does not include our tips section. Please read the tips section in order to avoid common recipe problems.
• This recipe is part of Bread Dad’s series on easy Quick Bread Recipes such as cranberry bread, pumpkin bread and pineapple bread.

• Applesauce breads tend to have only a mild apple flavor. If you want more of apple flavor, you can try using a “chunky” applesauce. The applesauce chunks provide localized areas of concentrated apple flavor.
• If you want to make applesauce bread without cranberries, you might like to try our easy Applesauce Bread recipe. It is made with applesauce, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc.

• Use FRESH cranberries for the best results. Using frozen cranberries can have the problem of adding extra moisture and this can throw off the recipe (and leave it undercooked).
• If you use frozen cranberries, you need to make sure that there is no extra moisture being added to the batter. Many frozen packaged cranberries have tons of ice crystals (and if you add the ice crystals, you will be adding too much moisture). To get around this problem, you should wash off the ice crystals, strain the cranberries in a colander and then dry the cranberries with a paper towel. Just make sure the cranberries are completely dried off before adding to the batter.
• If you want an even sweeter applesauce loaf, you can use dried cranberries instead of the fresh/frozen cranberries. Companies often add extra sugar to the dried cranberries during the manufacturing process. According to Wikipedia, “most commercially produced dried cranberries contain added sugar”.
• If you are looking for a sandwich-type bread recipe (not a sweet “quick bread”) with cranberries, you should try Bread Dad’s Cranberry Walnut Bread Recipe.

• Be careful when removing this quick bread from the bread pan. Since it is stuffed with cranberries, it can be fragile especially if all of the cranberries are on one side of the quick bread (less “bread” holding the quick bread together at that section). Also cranberries can stick to the bread pan as they bake in the oven.
• If your “quick breads” (e.g. applesauce bread & banana bread) are sticking to the bottom of your bread pan, you should consider either “greasing” the bottom of the pan with butter or vegetable oil, using a cooking spray or using a nonstick pan.
• However, don’t grease the bread pan near the top of the pan. There will be nothing for batter to cling to as it rises. This could cause the bread top to collapse as it rises.
• Cranberries can be very sticky after baking. Therefore, many bakers like to line their bread pan with baking parchment paper in order to reduce the sticking issue and to reduce any potential “breakage” when removing a quick bread from the bread pan.

• Use FRESH ingredients (e.g. baking soda and flour) for the best results. For example, if you use stale baking soda and/or baking powder, your quick bread will not rise properly and will be too dense. Baking soda & powder is best if used within 6 months of opening the container. Using baking soda from an open container (that has been deodorizing your refrigerator for months) may lead to subpar results. Old & hard baking soda/powder may lead to rising problems and/or leave small bitter clumps in your quick bread.
• Try to keep your ingredients (e.g. flour) in airtight food containers in order to extend their shelf life. Airtight containers protect ingredients from pests, dust, odors, moisture, etc.
• Old flour absorbs moisture from the air (if kept in an open bag and not an airtight container). This extra moisture can throw off recipes and leads to overly wet dough and/or underbaked bread. You know there is a problem when the flour looks “lumpy” and pours out with many clumps of flour. FYI – Sometimes, even new flour can have an excess moisture problem if the paper package is not tightly sealed. I occasionally have this problem with “generic” supermarket brand flour.
• Optional – If you don’t have cranberries, you can use blueberries as an alternative and make an applesauce blueberry bread.
• If your family loves cranberries, you should also try my recipes for Pumpkin Cranberry Bread, Cranberry Banana Bread, Cranberry Banana Muffins and Cranberry Bread (with Dried Cranberries).

• Please use the suggested 9 x 5 metal bread pan to make this recipe. If you start using different sized pans, there is a greater potential for bread top collapses (potentially less bread pan “wall” support for the quick bread as it rises), different interior batter to exterior bread ratios (thus the need for different baking lengths), smaller pans are more likely to overflow, etc.
• Make sure that your oven has been completely preheated. If the oven has not been properly preheated, this quick bread could come out undercooked. Use a portable oven thermometer to check the interior oven temperature. Depending on teh size of your oven & temperature used, it can take 10-20 minutes before your oven is fully preheated.
• If your oven does not have a built-in thermometer, you can buy an inexpensive oven thermometer that you can place inside your oven (in order to correctly gauge the temperature). Moreover, some built-in oven gauges can be 25-50 degrees different than the actual temperature inside the oven. For the best results, you should know the actual temperature inside your oven (as this reduces the potential for over or under cooked baked products).

• Do not remove the light brown sugar from this recipe because the slight acidity of the brown sugar helps to activate the baking soda. Brown sugar also adds a slightly richer taste to this applesauce loaf.
• This doesn’t happen often but if the top of the applesauce bread looks too moist or under cooked, you should try the “toothpick test”. Gently push a toothpick (or long wooden skewer) into the top of the bread and see if any batter sticks to the toothpick. If batter is sticking to the toothpick then it hasn’t completely cooked. Place the bread pan back into the still hot oven for another 2 or 3 minutes. Make sure to wear oven gloves because the bread pan will be very hot. After the 2 or 3 minutes, remove the bread pan and test the bread again with a tooth pick.
• If you have a problem with an applesauce loaf recipe, please make sure that you are following the recipe exactly (e.g. using the correct oven temperature), using the correct amounts of ingredients (e.g. don’t eyeball the measurements versus using a measuring cup or accidentally add a tablespoon when a teaspoon is called for), using the correct ingredients (e.g. baking soda/powder versus yeast or all purpose flour versus bread flour), etc. Please don’t “wing” things with recipes.

• My recipes are based on US ingredient measurements (e.g. US cups & tablespoons). However, as a courtesy to our European visitors, I have also included some very ROUGH European equivalents (e.g. grams & milliliters). Since I rarely use European measurements when baking, please let me know in the comment section below if any of the European ingredient measurements need to be changed (e.g. for XYZ ingredient, milliliters are more commonly used versus the grams information listed in the recipe).
• Always wear oven mitts/gloves when dealing with bread pans & a hot oven.
• For more delicious quick bread recipes (e.g. banana bread, pumpkin bread, blueberry bead or cornbread), please visit Bread Dad’s main Quick Bread Recipes section.

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Reference Sources

1. Wikipedia, Applesauce
2. Wikipedia, Cranberry
3. Wikipedia, Quick Bread

Related Recipes

1. Cranberry Banana Bread
2. Cranberry Bread with Dried Cranberries
3. Cranberry Bread with Fresh Cranberries
4. Cranberry Walnut Bread (Sandwich Bread)
5. Pumpkin Cranberry Bread

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