This cranberry cake will make you want to bake it over and over again

This super delicious and moist cranberry cake is perfect for the Christmas season and so easy to make. Once you’ve made this you’ll want to bake it over and over!

Sweet, sour, super delicious and so versatile. That pretty much sums up cranberries for me and is the ultimate reason why I love them so much. In this cranberry cake

Home for Christmas

Growing up we never had any cranberries. Here in the Netherlands it is a pretty recent development that you can actually get cranberries in the stores. Which is funny really because they grow right around the corner, but somehow I always thought they were American. Probably because I saw so many of them on American food blogs.

But now that they are easy to find here I make so many things with cranberries each year that my friends are starting to call me miss cranberry. I just love the flavor. Sour, tart but handled the right way so delicious!

Cranberry cake

So let’s start with this delicious cranberry cake. It’s super easy to make and will be a big hit with your guests for the holidays. Since the cake itself is not super sweet I love serving it with some lemon icing drizzled over the top. That is optional but does give the cranberry cake an extra bit of deliciousness.

How to make the cranberry cake

To start with it is best if you have all your ingredients at room temperature. For the cake I use roughly 5 medium sized eggs. I start by whipping the eggs with the sugar, salt, lemon juice and vanilla until it triples in volume. That will take some time so easiest to do this in a stand mixer if you have one.

Once the batter becomes fluffy and light you fold through the self rising flour and the melted (and cooled!) butter.

How to prevent the cranberries from sinking to the bottom of the tin?

Now here’s a tricky question. My solution to this problem is to roll the cranberries through some icing sugar and making sure they all have a bit of sugar around them. That will give them some more resistance and will keep them floating in the batter.

However; while this works almost every time, I did have some instances where it didn’t work so well. I guess there are more variables at play here, but in general dusting the fruit (this works for blue berries as well as for cranberries) is the solution to keep them spread throughout the cake.

Can I replace the cranberries for other fruit?

I gave a hint already above but yes you can definitely substitute the cranberries for other fruit. Most commonly changed for blue berries, but you can also make this cake with apple slices or pear slices or most other types of fruit you like.

Be aware that – if you use very wet fruit – the result might be different. If possible I would make this cake with berries (but not strawberries) or apple. Don’t go for peach, strawberries or another kind of wet fruit. That will make the cake too wet and it won’t bake properly.

I don’t like lemon can I leave that out?

Yes you can. I love adding some citrus as I am a sucker for tart flavors but you can absolutely leave it out if you want. You can either replace it for orange juice or mandarin juice or leave it out all together.

What to serve with the cranberry cake?

You can serve this cranberry cake just as is, but if you want to give it some extra oomph you can add vanilla ice cream, whipped cream or lemon icing. Dusting with powdered sugar is also delicious!