Cranberry Cake with Cranberry Glaze

Beautiful buttery Bundt cake made with sour cream and filled with whole cranberry sauce and topped with bright red cranberry glaze.

One of my favorite parts of travel is poking about in foreign stores and markets and lusting over the available ingredients and cookware, only some of which I can bring home in a suitcase. Other people, I hesitate to say normal people because with my new addiction of reading foodie blogs, it appears I am in good company, tend to bring home trinkets and fabric and souvenirs of a more personal or mass-produced nature. Eiffel Tower paperweight, anyone? I went to Switzerland in April and, aside from some chocolate, this is the one thing I bought. From an antique store.

I adore its shape and its potential. I also love that it will always bring back memories of a perfect day in the Swiss countryside, making new friends and reconnecting with one dear friend from many years ago.

Today I am using it to make a delicious, moist cranberry cake – the perfect use for any leftover cans of whole cranberry sauce after Thanksgiving – but good enough to buy a can of whole cranberry sauce, just to make it.  I did. Many thanks to my friend, Lizann, for sharing this great recipe with me!

Ingredients

For the cake:

1 cup or 227g butter

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon salt

8 oz or 240ml sour cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup or 200g sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 cups or 250g flour

1 can (14 oz or 397g) whole cranberry sauce (3/4 for the cake, 1/4 for the glaze)

For the glaze:

1/4 can whole cranberry sauce

1 heaped teaspoon cornstarch or corn flour

1/4 cup or 31g confectioners’ or powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon butter

Method

Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C.

Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  

Still beating, add in the eggs, one at a time.  

In a separate bowl or in the measuring cup, add your vanilla to the sour cream.  Sift dry ingredients together and add to butter/sugar/egg bowl, alternating with the sour cream and vanilla.  

First some dry ingredients.

Then some sour cream. And so on. 

Beat until all is mixed well.

Spoon half the batter into well-greased AND FLOURED tube or Bundt pan.  (If you have a vintage one, perhaps a gift from your grandmother or great-aunt, or a trip to Geneva, take a few moments to recall fond memories while you butter it good! Do not skimp on the butter. You do not want this cake to stick.)



Smooth it out and make a sort of very shallow trench in the middle. 

Mash the cranberry sauce with a fork, just to break up the jelly part.  Whole berries are fine.  

Spoon in 3/4 of the can of cranberry sauce on top of the batter.

Top with remaining batter and spread it around.

Bake for about 55-65 minutes or until a wooden skewer comes out clean. If the top starts to get too brown, cover it loosely with a piece of foil. 

Meanwhile, the glaze!  Add the cornstarch to the rest of the can of cranberries and stir until it is dissolved.  Add the confectioners’ sugar and the vanilla and stir again.

Put the mixture in a pan on a gentle fire and cook, stirring frequently, until it begins to bubble and thicken.

Take the pan off the fire and whisk in the butter.  Allow to cool until the cake is ready.

When the cake is done, take it out and allow to cool for 10 minutes.  It should pull away from the sides slightly here.  You can run your toothpick or wooden skewer around the edge of the cake to encourage it to turn loose when turned over.

Turn pan upside down on platter and remove pan while still warm.

Drizzle on the glaze after the cake has cooled a bit.  A too-hot cake will make the glaze melt right off.   Enjoy!

Enjoy!

What do YOU bring home from your holidays?  Leave me a comment.  I’d love to know.