{TWD} Cranberry Upside-Downer Cake

This week the Tuesdays With Dorie baking group got a jump-start on cool-weather baking with the Cranberry Upside Downer, a fairly simple butter cake festively topped with bright red cranberries and chopped nuts (or alternatively with cut peaches). As pictured in Dorie Greenspan's wonderful book Baking From My Home to Yours the cake looks like the perfect addition to a holiday menu, so I was thrilled to get to preview this recipe now, at the very beginning of the Fall (even if the temperatures around here are still decidedly summer-ish).

n.o.e.'s notes:

- Sabrina of the blog Superfluous chose the recipe this week. If you'd like to bake this cake, you can find the recipe on her post.

- There was no special occasion on my calendar for me to serve this cake, so I baked just half a recipe in a 6" cake pan and we enjoyed it as a weeknight dessert.

- I replaced the white sugar with blond palm sugar. It has a wonderful caramel-y flavor and a lower glycemic load than regular sugar.

- Rather than cinnamon, I added freshly ground nutmeg and allspice to my dry ingredients. I chose the almond extract option rather than vanilla.


- My nut drawer had a bag of very tiny pecans, which is what I used in the topping. I lightly toasted them in the oven before placing the in the baking pan with the cranberries.

- The local Fresh Market carries a line of frozen berries all year long, including cranberries, so that's what I used. I cut them in half while they were still frozen because I love the "wagon wheel" effect from the cut berries.


- I wanted plenty of topping, so I used a heaping measure of pecans and cranberries but it still made rather a thin layer of topping. The next time I'd probably double the amount of topping.

- My 6" cake baked for 25 minutes.

- I was excited to use my new little 1-cup copper saucier twice - first for cooking the melted butter and sugar and the next time for warming the jelly that glazes the cake at the end. I used a mixture of black cherry and apple jelly because I still don't have the versatile and useful red currant jelly.


the verdict:

We enjoyed the cake for dinner on Monday and breakfast this morning! As far as cakes-with-fruit go, this one doesn't unseat the Dimply Plum Cake (which I posted here and followed up here), but it was a great weekday sweet to have on hand. It would also be a good addition to the holiday table, served with some vanilla ice cream.

The crumb was surprisingly soft and quite moist and provided a lovely sweet base for the topping's tart/sweet/crunchy combination of flavors. As an alternative to cranberries, in addition to the peaches that Dorie mentions this cake could be paired with any number of different fresh fruits (the tarter the better).