A delicious cranberry cake with butter sauce, is Fall comfort food at its best. Enjoy warm for a great fresh cranberry dessert!
It’s cranberry harvest season here in Central Ontario, so it seemed appropriate to enjoy a lovely fresh cranberry dessert with the first of the season’s crop. This cranberry is filled with cranberries, so it’s lovely bites of tart are perfectly complemented by the warm butter sauce. It’s Fall comfort food at it’s best!
That said, did you know that cranberries freeze so beautifully! Cranberries require no preparation for the freezer at all. Freezing cranberries is as easy as just placing the bag you buy them in right in to the freezer. You’ll always have a ready supply of cranberries to use year round.
Ingredients and Substitutions
Cranberries – you can use fresh or frozen cranberries for this cranberry cake.
Whipping Cream – this is heavy cream, typically 35% b.f. I don’t recommend a lighter cream, as the sauce will be much lighter and thinner.
Recipe Tips
Normally I suggest that the sauce could be optional, but in this case, I feel like this one is a package deal. The cake itself is so full of cranberries, that it lends to the tart side. The sweet and creamy butter sauce is what balances it out.
This cake is best enjoyed with the sauce warm and the cake lightly warm.
Making Ahead, Storing and Freezing
You can make both the cake and sauce ahead and re-heat, as needed. Refrigerate the sauce and store the cake tightly wrapped at room temperature. The cake will also freeze well, though I don’t recommend freezing the sauce.
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Get the Recipe: Cranberry Cake with Butter Sauce
Ingredients
Cake:
- 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 cup white granulatedsugar
- 1 large egg
- 2 cups all-purpose flour, spooned and levelled
- 1 teaspoon salt, reduce to 3/4 tsp if using salted butter
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 cup milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 cups fresh or frozen whole cranberries, thawed
Vanilla Sauce:
- 1/2 cup salted butter
- 1 Tablespoon all purpose flour flour
- 1 cup white granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup whipping cream, 35% b.f.
- 1 Tablespoon white vinegar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F (regular bake setting/not fan assisted). Grease a 9-inch square baking pan and set aside.
- For the cake: In a medium bowl with an electric mixer or the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, beat butter and sugar together until crumbly, about 2 minutes. Beat in the egg. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture alternately with the milk, beating well after each addition. Fold in cranberries.
- Spoon batter in to prepared baking pan and smooth batter. Bake at 350° F for 50-55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Set on a cooling rack to cool slightly while you prepare the sauce.
- For the sauce: Melt butter in medium saucepan over medium heat. Add flour and sugar. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and immediately stir in 3/4 c. heavy whipping cream, vinegar and vanilla. Stir quickly until blended. Pour warm sauce over squares of slightly warm cake.
- Cake is best enjoyed with lightly warm cake topped with warm sauce. Left-overs can be re-warmed to enjoy later.
Notes
More Cranberry Cake Recipes to Love!
Hi! I’m Jennifer, a home cook schooled by trial and error and almost 40 years of getting dinner on the table! I love to share my favourite recipes, both old and new, together with lots of tips and tricks to hopefully help make your home cooking enjoyable, stress free, rewarding and of course, delicious!
Question here…I have a request for white Chocolate cranberry cake for
Thanksgiving. However, the person requesting doesn’t really like icing :/ I am going to make this beautiful cake instead….but do you think putting a small amount of white chocolate in the butter sauce would work out? Thanks in advance :)
Hi Elena, white chocolate can be a bit tricky, as it can seize up and make a gloppy mess. I have had the best luck with it when melting with a bit of heavy cream, so since the sauce has heavy cream in it, I think I might try melting the white chocolate in warmed cream first, then adding it to the sauce when the cream is specified. Alternately, there is no reason you couldn’t toss some white chocolate chips in the cake batter if that ideas appeals to you.
Your recipe is labeled American/Canadian. Please tell me what size liquid cup you use?
My Canadian liquid cup is 227ml (as is my dry measure cup). As long as you use the same cup size for both liquid and dry ingredients, any small variation in the size of the cup shouldn’t make a difference.
Hi Jennifer,
I’m surprised by your answer. My understanding is that Canadian cup is 250ml while the American is about 240ml (237 actually).
One cup of butter, by weight not volume, is 227grams not ml. I think the differences can matter.
When Canada first switched to metric, the “cups” were 227ml, which corresponded to the Imperial cup. Since that time, Canada has officially switched to a true metric cup, which is 250ml, but a lot of us, including me, continue to use our old measuring cups, which are a 227ml cup size. I’ve never had an issue with recipes with the small differences.
I made the vanilla sauce to drizzle on a fresh peach cake, that is close to the texture of bread pudding. I used a bit of pure maple syrup in place of the sugar. Yum! Served w/peach anything, this sauce tastes just like my Grandma’s, I need to try it over cinnamon rolls… then i’ll know for sure. Enjoy!
So glad you enjoyed it! Thanks :)
My daughter is allergic to corn, and white vinegar is derived from corn. Any idea what might work as a substitute?
Hi Kimberly, I think a bit of lemon juice would do the trick! Enjoy :)
Made this last weekend for dinner at a friends. I had 2 cups of cranberries still leftover from the holidays, so this was a great way to use them up. I decided since it should be served warm, that I would mix it up right before I left and take the unbaked cake over. I popped it in the oven while we were eating dinner. This was a perfect dessert for a party of 6 without having too much leftover, and without much fuss. I got compliments from everyone. I agree, the sauce is as much a part of the cake and should not be left out. Last night we had leftovers and I poured some of the sauce over the top and reheated in the microwave. The leftovers were delicious that way, so making ahead and reheating individual slices works well. I even think wrapping up individual slices in the freezer would be just as delicious.
I used an 8×8 pan and cooked for a few minutes longer, but the recommended 9×9 pan would make a little less thick pieces and absorb the sauce better. This is an easy to make and unique cake that is pretty to serve. Even better, I was recently in Quebec and brought back some Maple Cream Liquor and Caramel Liquor with Maple Canadian Whiskey and served that along side the cake! Delicious. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks! So glad you enjoyed it :)
Wow. Cake doesn’t do much for me. But creme vanille?!!! Yes!!!
Thanks Mimi and yes, all cakes can be improved with sauce imo!
Jennifer, I made this twice in one week! It has such awesome flavors…everyone raves about it and savors every bite! It’s great for breakfast without the sauce too! Thank you for the recipe, it will forever be in my file.
So glad you are enjoying this cake, Karen :) I am a huge fan of fresh cranberries in baking, so it’s a favourite of mine, too! Thanks!