Pecan-Cranberry Loaf | Baking with Dorie

It’s never too early to start assembling recipes for Thanksgiving. Pecan and cranberry are the quintessential ingredients that add pizzazz to any Thanksgiving menu. When Dorie alerts us not to underestimate the pecan cranberry cake, I take it to heart and double the recipe. I have reasons to make more than one cake: some to keep and some to giveaway. The speckled look with the red cranberries poking through are welcoming and comforting.

Attractive look aside, the pecan cranberry cake has the fall flavors and warm spices to boot. It has chopped pecans, brown sugar, ground coriander, orange zest, buttermilk and fresh cranberries. You sense the warm embrace, yet there is no butter in the batter. There is plenty of richness in the cake, and it comes from canola oil — not butter.

The only trouble I’ve encountered is the lumpiness of the batter when the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, coriander, baking soda and orange zest) is folded into the sugar-egg-buttermilk mixture. To get a smoother mixture, I decide to give the batter a blitz in the Vitamix which generates more power than my arm. That works but ended with more bowls to cleanup.

Baking time varies from 35 minutes to an hour, depending on the pan size. I know I’ve nailed it when the top of the cake bursts with a big crackled smile and a deep golden brown color.