Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Just wanted to pop on to share a cake I made for dessert. It’s a cranberry upside down cake, made with fresh cranberries. I had never worked with fresh before, and was worried it would be too tart, but this recipe was great. The cranberries get caramelized with the sugar and allspice for a perfect combination of sweet and tart cranberry flavor.
Cranberry Upside Down Cake (adapted from Brown Eyed Baker)
Ingredients
- 1¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 1½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- 8 TBSP unsalted butter, at room temperature, divided
- 1 cup granulated sugar, divided
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ¼ tsp ground allspice
- 1¾ cup fresh cranberries
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
- ½ cup milk
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
- Rub 2 TBSP of butter along the bottom and sides of an 8-inch cake pan. This will result in a very thick layer of butter.
- Then in a small bowl, mix 1/2 cup of the granulated sugar with the cinnamon and allspice. Sprinkle all along the bottom of the cake pan.
- Place the cranberries in a single layer on top of the sugar mixture.
- With an electric mixer, mix together the butter and sugar in a large bowl until fluffy. Add in the egg and vanilla bean paste.
- Reduce the speed to low and add the flour to the butter mixture in three batches, alternating with the milk.
- Spoon the batter on top of the cranberries and spread across until even. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Place on a wire rack to cook for 20 mins. Run a cake spatula around the sides and invert the cake onto a plate or cake round. Leftovers can be stored at room temperature.
I haven’t been hired for a baking job in a while. But to my surprise, I was contacted a few weeks ago by a friend of my sister-in-law. She wanted me to make cake pops for her daughter’s first birthday. The catch? She wanted start shaped ones to look like a fairy wand. I had never made shaped cake pops before, but I was up to the challenge. I even practiced making some 
I used sanding sugar to make the pops sparkly. Each pop was bagged individually and tied with pink and purple ribbon.
I was really happy with how these came out. And now I’m totally inspired…
This book is awesome. It is contains recipes that all use a specially formulated cookie dough created by Lindsay. What is special is that there are NO raw eggs in the recipe. So you have all the yumminess of cookie dough without the salmonella.
