Cranberry Swirl Cake

Whenever canned whole cranberry sauce is on sale, I stock up. I also keep an eye out for when sour cream goes on sale - the full fat variety only, if you please! And the reason I do these things is a certain cranberry cake recipe that a co-worker shared with me oh so many moons ago.

She's shared this recipe with other friends, but they've always come back and told her that theirs was good, but not as good as hers! After a while, she finally realized that she always made the cake with a large 16 oz. can of cranberry sauce rather than the 8 oz. can prescribed by the recipe. A ha!

Beginning with the holiday season 2009, I noticed that the large can of cranberry sauce had shrunk. :( Yup, it was down to 14 oz. per can. Fortunately it was still enough for this recipe, since my mom always thought that the cake was a bit too moist (or wet!) when I used the content of the entire can, but still... first it was the incredible shrinking ice cream, then the single serve yogurt cup... now this!

So here's the recipe my co-worker once found printed in a newspaper, and now cries out "Holidays!" to me in a loud delicious voice...

Cranberry Swirl Cake

1 stick butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

½ pint sour cream (8 oz.)

1 teaspoon almond extract

1 large 16-ounce can of whole cranberry sauce

½ cup crushed nuts

Cream butter, add sugar gradually. Add unbeaten eggs (one at a time). Use mixer at medium speed.

Reduce mixer speed and add dry ingredients that have been sifted together, alternately with sour cream, ending with dry ingredients. Add almond extract.

Grease 8 inch tube pan. Put a layer of batter in bottom of pan, then swirl around some of the whole cranberry sauce. Add another layer of batter and more cranberry sauce. Add remaining batter and swirl the remaining cranberry sauce on top. Sprinkle nuts on top. Bake at 350F for 55 minutes.

Topping:

¾ cup confectioners’ sugar

1 tablespoon warm water

½ teaspoon almond flavoring

Dribble over top of cake after it is taken out of pan. Turn cake out of pan in about 5 minutes and frost while warm.

Vivian's Notes:

1) I omit the nuts because I don't usually have any around the house, as well as out of consideration of allergies.

2) For two 9-inch round cake pans, layering only twice each, bake for about 35 minutes.

3) For 2 large loaf pans, layering only twice each, bake for 40-42 minutes.

Baking with... Pears!

Apples... yes. Pineapple... yeah. Cranberries... yup! Bananas... most definitely, YES! But pears? Really? No, I've never baked with pears till just a couple of months ago. I had originally plucked a pear tart recipe from one of my favorite food sites, Chowhound... hmmm... maybe a couple of years ago now. If you are a frequenter of that site, I'm sure you've run into the Sir Gawain cake vs. the galleygirl tart debate. Both recipes are well received by the general Chowhound community, both consist of ingredients I normally have in the house (except perhaps the fruit), and both seemed pretty simple to make, so I saved both, but only just got around to baking galleygirl's friend's Laurie's Pear Tart, and I've already garnered a mass of compliments! Not to mention, I love it too! The key, as noted by galleygirl, is to underbake it, that way the center is sort of custardy around the sweet pear slices. When fully cooked, the batter bakes up into a rich butter cake, which, while still yummy, is less special.

The Recipe verbatim from Chowhound:

Laurie's Pear Tart

3 or 4 ripe juicy pears. (doesn't matter what kind, juicy and ripe are KEY!)
Peel, core, and cut into sixths or eighths

Cream 1 stick butter
3/4 c. sugar
1 teasoon vanilla

Add
2 eggs, one at a time...

Combine
1 c. flour
1 teasoon baking powder
1/2 t. salt...

Add to butter mixture.

Spray an 8" (important) spring form pan with Pam. Spread the batter in it. Now, in a pinwheel pattern, press the slices of pear, peeled side up, into the batter. Cram in as many as you can; since the batter rises and covers the pears, there's no points given for style here(g). The more pears, the moister the cake will be. Sprinkle with handful of sugar before baking. Bake at 350 degrees til a skewer comes out clean, about an hour(Start checking at 40 minutes!). If you have any doubts, UNDERBAKE. This is a whole different animal if it dries out. Then it's just a cake; correctly done, you'll love it. It's just one of those recipes that is greater than the sum of it's parts. really. Ask my Dad. ;)

Vivian's Notes:
1) Personally, I could only fit 1-1/2 pears into my 8 inch round pan.
2) Another Chowhound noted that she used 1.5 times the batter for her 9 inch pan - I tried this, but it was a touch too much batter for my short 9 inch round cake pan.
3) It was still wonderfully moist and yummy days after baking.