Cranberry Coffee Cake

This Cranberry Coffee Cake is a soft, tangy bundt loaded with whole cranberries and brightened with orange zest, then finished with a simple glaze. The cranberries burst as it bakes and leave little pockets of tartness all through it. Perfect with coffee, which is rather the point.

Cranberries and orange belong together and I’ll not be taking questions.

Something happens when you put them in the same cake. The orange zest lifts everything, the cranberries go tart and jammy in their little pockets, and the whole thing tastes like December in the best possible way.

The cake itself is a Greek yogurt bundt, which means it’s soft and rich and it keeps beautifully for days. Sour cream does the same job if that’s what’s in the fridge. The batter is thick, thicker than you might expect, and that’s exactly how it should be. It’s what holds a cup and a half of cranberries in suspension instead of letting them all sink to the bottom.

And there’s a glaze, which is icing sugar, orange juice, and vanilla whisked together in about 20 seconds. If you’re more of a streusel person, there’s a topping for that too, just after the method.

• All purpose flour (2¼ cups): Spoon it into the cup and level it off rather than scooping. Scooping packs it down and you can end up with a good deal more than the recipe wants. A gluten free cup for cup blend works nicely here.
• Baking soda (½ teaspoon): The sour cream and cranberries bring the acidity it needs to work. Test it if the tin’s been open a while, because faded soda gives you a flat heavy cake.
• Salt (½ teaspoon): Just enough to sharpen everything up.
• Unsalted butter (1 cup, softened): Softened, not melted, and not straight from the fridge either. It needs to be soft enough to take a fingerprint, because creaming it with the sugar is what puts air into the cake.
• Sugar (1½ cups): Creamed with the butter until pale and fluffy. That takes longer than you think, 3 or 4 minutes, and it’s worth the wait.
• Eggs (3 large, at room temperature): In one at a time, fully mixed before the next one goes in. Cold eggs can make the creamed butter seize up and go grainy.
• Orange (1, zested and juiced): The whole reason this cake works. The zest goes in the batter and the juice goes in the glaze, so one orange does both jobs. Zest it before you juice it, which is advice I have needed myself more than once.
• Vanilla extract (2½ teaspoons total): Two in the cake, half in the glaze. Pure if you’ve got it.
• Greek yogurt (1 cup): Moisture, richness, and a slight tang that plays beautifully with the cranberries. Sour cream works exactly the same way.
• Cranberries (1½ cups, fresh or frozen): Whole, not chopped, so you get those bursts of tartness. Frozen go in straight from the freezer with no thawing.
• Icing sugar (1 cup): For the glaze. Sift it if it’s lumpy, or you’ll be chasing bits around the bowl.

Prep the pan: Oven to 350°F and grease and flour a 10 cup bundt pan properly, right into every crevice. Bundt pans are gorgeous and they will absolutely betray you if you rush this bit.

Mix the dry ingredients: Flour, baking soda, and salt whisked together in a medium bowl. Set it aside.

Cream the butter and sugar: Butter and sugar in your mixer, beaten until pale and fluffy. Give it a proper 3 or 4 minutes. This is where the lift comes from and it’s not a step to hurry.

Add the eggs: One at a time, beating well between each. Then the orange zest and vanilla.

Alternate the dry and the yogurt: Add the dry mix and the Greek yogurt in turns, starting and ending with the dry. The batter will be thick, almost stiff, and that’s exactly what you want.

Fold in the cranberries: Toss them with a teaspoon of flour first so they stay suspended rather than sinking, then fold them in gently. Frozen ones go in as they are.

Bake: Spread the batter into the pan and bake 55 minutes to an hour, until a toothpick comes out clean. Start checking at 50, and if the top is browning too fast, tent it loosely with foil.

Cool and glaze: Ten minutes in the pan, then out onto a rack to cool completely. Whisk the icing sugar, orange juice, and vanilla together and drizzle it over once the cake is cool. Warm cake will drink the glaze right in.

I’m a glaze person, but plenty of people feel that a coffee cake without a crumb topping isn’t really a coffee cake, and they have a point.

Here’s how to do it in a bundt.

Make the streusel. Rub together ¾ cup flour, ½ cup packed brown sugar, ½ teaspoon cinnamon, and 6 tablespoons cold butter until it looks like coarse crumbs with some pea sized lumps. A cup of chopped pecans is excellent in there too.

Put it in the pan first. Grease and flour the bundt as usual, then scatter the streusel evenly across the bottom before any batter goes in. When you turn the cake out, it’s on top.

Then the batter goes over it, spread carefully so you don’t disturb the layer underneath.

Bake as usual. Same temperature, same timing, maybe an extra few minutes.

Skip the glaze if you go this route. Streusel and glaze together is a lot of sweet, and the crumb topping is doing plenty on its own.

One note: this is a variation I’d try on your own before serving it to company. A streusel in the bottom of a bundt pan behaves a little differently than one scattered on a flat cake, and every pan is its own personality.

• Grease the pan like you mean it. Every ridge and crevice. Bundt pans are unforgiving.
• Cream the butter and sugar properly. Three or 4 minutes until pale and fluffy. It’s the lift.
• Room temperature eggs. Cold eggs can make creamed butter curdle.
• Toss the cranberries in flour. It’s what keeps them suspended instead of all sitting at the bottom.
• The batter should be thick. Almost stiff. That’s correct and it’s holding all that fruit.
• Ten minutes in the pan, no longer. Too soon and it breaks, too long and it sticks.
• Glaze a cool cake. A warm one absorbs it and you lose the drizzle.

• Streusel topping. In the section above.
• Lemon instead of orange. Lemon zest and lemon juice throughout. Sharper and brighter, and very good. You’ll notice in the video, I actually used lemon juice and lemon zest, so both work but I think orange is the best option with cranberries.
• With nuts. A cup of chopped pecans or walnuts folded in with the cranberries.
• Dried cranberries. If fresh aren’t around, soak 1 cup of dried cranberries in warm orange juice for 10 minutes first, then drain. Sweeter and less tart.
• Different berries. Blueberries or raspberries work, though you’ll lose the tartness that makes this cake what it is.
• Cream cheese glaze. Beat 2 ounces of softened cream cheese into the glaze for something richer and tangier.

Room temperature: covered, up to 2 days. It’s genuinely good on day 2 once everything has settled.

Fridge: wrapped in plastic and then foil, up to 5 days. Let slices come back to room temperature before serving, because cold butter cake is a sad thing.

Freezer: 3 months, wrapped tightly in plastic then foil. Thaw overnight at room temperature.

Freeze it unglazed and add the glaze after thawing. It holds up much better that way.