Cranberry bread

When I went to the grocery store a few days ago to pick up the ingredients for the pies for Thanksgiving (which were, by the way, a huge hit!), I grabbed a bag of fresh cranberries.  I didn't have a recipe in mind for them, but I figured I'd come up with something.  I remembered a cranberry bread that I had made a while ago, and decided that that was the perfect use for the bag of cranberries now sitting in my fridge.  The last time I made it, I made it as a large loaf, however tonight I decided to make mini loaves, because, well, anything miniature is just way cuter, right? 

I love how the tartness of the fresh cranberries is counteracted slightly by the sugar on top.  I don't have turbinado sugar (as the recipe calls for), so I used some cake decorating sugar for the sweetness and the crunch.  I also added about a teaspoon of ground cinnamon to the dry mixture, because I love cinnamon.  There was one little problem - I had no milk in the fridge (well, I had one that was past it's expiration date, but smelled fine, but I didn't want to risk it), but I (surprisingly) had buttermilk in the fridge, so I used that instead.  The batter was a little too thick, so I added another splash of buttermilk (about 1/8 cup).

The batter yielded about 6 mini loaves in the mini loaf tin that I have.

I think the cinnamon (besides making my apartment smell fantastic) added a nice touch of flavor.  The cranberries were tart, as expected, but I don't think the buttermilk gave it any extra tartness.  That being said, I would still make it with milk in the future (I assume that the thickness of the batter is related to my using buttermilk and not regular milk).