Cranberry Honey Cake for Thanksgiving

Cranberry Honey Cake 

This recipe was kind of an accident and the best and happiest one to date in my kitchen.  (The kitchen that will soon be torn assunder for an extended period of time as we try to fix the slope in our floor.)  

So I saw a Pinterest or Facebook recipe going around that was called a Cranberry Upside-down Cake. It really sounded good.  However, I really wanted to make it something my mom and dad would both really like.  I started with, Cranberry-pumpkin-upside-down-cake/ and from there came my own Cranberry Honey Cake that my sister says is just an upscale fruit cake.  

Ingredients:

Topping –

16 oz Cranberries, washed

½ c Kroger Select Nutmeg & Vanilla Infused Honey, maybe more or less

1 c regular honey, maybe more or less

Cake –

1 box vanilla cake mix (Betty Crocker Super Moist)

1 c butter (salted), melted

4 eggs

1 ¼ c milk, warm

1 c black walnuts, chopped

Filling –

1 c confectioner’s sugar

8 oz cream cheese, room temp

1 tub Cool Whip

1 small orange, zested & then sliced thin

To get started, I preheated the oven to 350 and set out my three round cake pans.  To prepare the pans, I poured melted butter into the pans and made sure all the sides were well-coated.  I had rinsed and prepared the fresh cranberries by sorting out any that were shriveled, soft or otherwise undesirable. I split my 12oz bag of cranberries between two pans, but with more cranberries, I would fill all three.  Once I had my cranberries in, I drizzled honey all over the cranberries.  I started with the nutmeg & vanilla and made sure I had a drizzle on almost every berry.  I then went back with the regular honey and filled in to make sure the honey was completely covering the berries.

Next is the batter.  I really wanted the cake to be all the super things that cake can be, but I wanted to use a box mix.  It's just simpler since my sister is diabetic and we don't use much flour, sugar or honey in our everyday cooking.  So, I chose a Betty Crocker vanilla cake mix and made it as moist and fattening as I could.  I substituted the 1 cup of water for 1 1/4 cup of warm milk.  The 1/2 c oil was substituted with 1 c of melted butter.  I added an extra egg and 1 tsp of vanilla extract to really intensify the vanilla flavor.  I combined all the ingredients for the cake mix and stirred in 1 c of chopped Black Walnuts.  

I was supposed to sprinkle some course raw sugar over the batter when I poured them into the pans, but I forgot.  I didn't miss it, but it's supposed to help keep it from rising too much.  I did have to trim one of my layers, but it did not go to waste!

The cakes went into the 350 degree preheated oven and in 20 mins were already done.  It seemed really fast.  I think the box mix said 25-35 min, so keep an eye on it!  I set my cakes out to cool overnight. 

I had decided before I bought the cake mix that I wanted at least a double layer and decided to go with a cream cheese-whipped topping filling to  hold it together since the suggested topping was whipped topping anyway.  With the cranberries filling the bottoms of the pans, there was more than enough batter for three pans.  

In the morning, I combined the sugar, cream cheese (which I left out overnight to bring to room temperature) and whipped topping right before assembling it.  The touch that I thought of last minute was the orange zest.  The cream cheese filling was pretty good, but I saw some fresh oranges sitting on the counter and thought that a little orange zest might be just the thing to zing the filling! It is perfect.  I rubbed one small orange all over my zester and then scraped it into the filling and stirred it in.  I then sliced up the orange in thin slices and coated it in sugar and stuck it in the oven on 475 degrees watching it carefully for the next 30 minutes to get it "kind of" candied to go on the top.  It was quick and maybe a little fresh to be "real" candied orange peel, but still good!  

I don't have any baking tools really so I just used some gallon bags with one of the corners cut off to pipe my filling between the layers.  You just want to be sure you don't go too far out to the edges because as you place the layers it will squish some of the filling out.  It kind of looks like a whoopie pie and a fruit cake and a cranberry upside down cake, but with the gooey honey topping I decided after taking a bit that this IS Cranberry Honey Cake.  And DELICIOUS!  

 My sister has already asked that I make it for Christmas dinner with the family since two of my sisters didn't make it for Thanksgiving.  

Hope you have similar success if  you try this recipe!