Cranberry Almond Butter Cake with Sour Cream Glaze -- a birthday treat and #bookgiveaway

LESLIE BUDEWITZ:  Mr. Right and I enjoy going out to dinner for special occasions, and when it’s truly special – a birthday or our anniversary – we’ll often indulge in dessert. But one of the joys of cooking and baking, for me, is making my own birthday cake. I’d been craving this one since last fall, when I bought a bag of cranberries we didn’t use, but only recently did I find the almond paste – actually, almond filling – and indulge myself. 

And yes, today is my birthday. It’s a milestone, so I’m celebrating publicly! You can see that the cake plate’s been around a long time – it’s more than a decade older than I am, part of the Fostoria Americana collection that started as wedding gifts to my parents. I always loved the glassware, and after my mother gave me her pieces, I started buying more. She found a few and friends have given me some, so now I have a wonderful, haphazard collection I use almost every day. 

A cake plate through the ages!

A couple of notes on ingredients: Our kitchen can be a bit chilly, making it hard to soften butter. Our microwave is not reliable, so this time, I heated the back of a plate with hot water, dried it and covered the bowl of butter with it, and stuck the bowl in front of our gas fireplace. It wasn’t on, but the heat from the pilot light was enough to get the butter just right. Score! Also, I couldn’t find almond paste so I used almond filling, which was already sweetened, and cut back the sugar. She scores again! I have not tried this with frozen cranberries, but think it would work fine as long as they are thawed in a colander and drained. 

Bundt cake pans have a fun history that brings together multiple traditions. According to this story in Food and Wine Magazine, a group of Jewish women in Minneapolis wanted to recreate the ring-shaped cakes they’d made in Europe, and asked David Dalquist, owner of Minnesota Nordic Ware, to make a pan for them. He did, casting aluminum in the now-familiar round shape with indentations for easy slicing. He originally called it “bund,” meaning bond or alliance, but then added the t, either for the trademark or to distance his company from a pro-Nazi group. I grew up with one – who knows, it may have been another wedding gift – although now I use a nonstick version. 

Other Bundt cakes I’ve shared that you might enjoy include this Glazed Chocolate Bundt Cake and this Chai Spice Coffee Cake  from Chai Another Day. 

I’m a big fan of cake or pie for breakfast, and I assure you, this cake pairs perfectly with a cup of coffee or tea!

What’s your favorite way to celebrate your birthday? What’s your favorite birthday dessert? Do you make your own cake or another treat – if you do, what kind? THREE lucky readers will win their choice of a signed paperback from my Food Lovers’ Village mysteries. 

Cranberry Almond Butter Cake with Sour Cream Glaze 

8-10 oz almond paste*

1 ¼ cup sugar

1 cup butter at room temperature

zest of one orange 

6 eggs

1 cup all-purpose flour

½ tsp baking powder

pinch salt

2 cups fresh cranberries

*If what you find is almond filling, already sweetened, reduce the sugar. For the cake shown, I used a 12 ounce can of filling and 1 cup sugar. 

Heat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour a Bundt cake pan. 

In the bowl of your stand mixer, cream together the almond paste and sugar. (Lumps are fine. Add the butter and orange zest and mix. Add the eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly, scraping the bowl if needed. In a separate small bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, and salt, then add to creamed mixture. Mix only until just incorporated. Fold in the cranberries. 

Bake for 55 minutes, until top (bottom!) of cake is golden and has begun to pull away from the sides of the pan. Cool thoroughly in the pan on a rack before unmolding onto your serving plate. If the cake breaks when you unmold, no worries – just stick it back together and use your glaze to disguise the cracks. 

Sour Cream Glaze 

1/4 cup sliced almonds, toasted

½ cup sour cream

3/4 - 1 cup powdered sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1-1/2 teaspoons milk

Toast the almonds in the oven, at 325 degrees, for 8-10 minutes, shaking pan occasionally. Remove from oven. Remember that they will continue to brown as they cool, so don’t overbake. 

In a medium bowl, combine sour cream and powdered sugar; mix until smooth. Add vanilla extract and milk. If glaze is too thick, thin with additional milk, starting with half a teaspoon until it’s a good consistency for drizzling. 

Glaze cooled cake. Top with sliced almonds. Celebrate!

What’s your favorite way to celebrate your birthday? What’s your favorite birthday dessert? Do you make your own cake – what kind? Three readers will win their choice of a signed paperback from the Food Lovers’ Village mysteries. (US mailing addresses only. Mr. Kitten will choose the winner Friday, March 8.) 

TO ERR IS CUMIN -- A Spice Shop Mystery (Seventh St. Books, coming July 16, 2024 in paper, ebook, and audio)

From the cover: 

One person’s treasure is another’s trash. . .

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, wants nothing more than to live a quiet life for a change, running her shop and working with customers eager to spice up their cooking. But when she finds an envelope stuffed with cash in a ratty old wingback left on the curb, she sets out to track down the owner.

Pepper soon concludes that the chair and its stash may belong to young Talia Cook, new in town and nowhere to be seen. Boz Bosworth, an unemployed chef Pepper’s tangled with in the past, shows up looking for the young woman, but Pepper refuses to help him search. When Boz is found floating in the Ship Canal, only a few blocks from Talia’s apartment, free furniture no longer seems like such a bargain.

On the hunt for Talia, Pepper discovers a web of connections threatening to ensnare her best customer. The more she probes, the harder it gets to tell who’s part of an unsavory scheme of corruption—and who might be the next victim.

Between her quest for an elusive herb, helping her parents remodel their new house, and setting up the Spice Shop’s first cooking class, Pepper’s got a full plate. Dogged by a sense of obligation to find the rightful owner of the hidden treasure, she keeps on showing up and asking questions.

One mistake, and she could find herself cashing out. . .

Available at Amazon  * Barnes & Noble  * Books-A-Million * Bookshop.org * And your local booksellers!

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Spice Shop Mysteries set in Seattle's Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in NW Montana. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody, standalone suspense, most recently Blind Faith. She is the winner of Agatha Awards in three categories: Best Nonfiction (2011), Best First Novel (2013), and Best Short Story (2018). Her latest book is Between a Wok and a Dead Place, the 7th Spice Shop mystery.  

A past president of Sisters in Crime and national board member of Mystery Writers of America, Leslie lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

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