The holiday season is such a busy time for everyone, with family and friends visiting from all over the world. Each of us are always trying to find great recipes that will help us with our time constraints, yet still show that we have put some time and effort into our prepared meals and desserts.
I am a huge fan of creating interesting snack cake recipes that are easy to put together in standard cake pans that look beautiful as is and require no further decorating – well, not unless you want to. The other important criteria is that is freezes well, because when I have a few hours to spare on the weekends, I stock up the freezer with delicious cakes that can be served whenever I need something special.
This year, I had some of my cranberry sauce left over from Thanksgiving. I made it using my compote recipe but added a little more juice to thin it out just a little. When I make the sauce, I like to pass everything through a mesh sieve to remove the skins of the cranberry fruit. You don’t have to do this if you like a thicker, chunkier texture, but for me a sauce should be a little smoother, and I didn’t want to have the skins of the cranberry fruit in the cake. I used a chunkier compote when I made my Cranberry Lemon Vodka Cake, but use whichever you prefer.
I also had a few apples left over, so I made some of my quick apple filling and decided to use them all up to make a cranberry apple coffeecake.
I used my trusty hot milk cake recipe which is so versatile and can be made into so many delicious items. This was a real keeper. The slight tartness from the cranberry sauce was a perfect complement to the sweet cake and spiced apples. This is one coffeecake that I will look forward to making every year.
Cranberry Apple Coffeecake
1 recipe hot milk cake
1 recipe apple pie filling
1-2 cups cranberry sauce
Prepare the cake batter according to the instructions on the link. Grease and line your cake pan with some parchment. Pour in 1/3 of the batter and spoon on the cranberry sauce. Pour on another 1/3 of the cake batter and add the cooled apple filling and swirl in. Pour on the last bit of batter and then top the entire cake with the streusel. Bake in 350°F oven for 30-40 minutes until cake test clean for batter. You make get some of the cranberry or apple filling on the tester, but that is OK.
Streusel Topping
1 sticks cold salted butter
1 cups flour
½ cup packed brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
3 teaspoons cinnamon
Add the cold butter to a medium sized bowl and then add the dry ingredients. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients until it is all incorporated and resembles a coarse meal. Store it in the refrigerator or freezer until ready to use.
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