Cranberry Coffee Cake

One of the chapters in the book that I don't often utilize is the Breakfast and Brunch chapter. And out of all the recipes in that chapter, the ones I despaired of never getting to were the coffee cakes. At work, they just don't like sweet things for breakfast, and at home, well, it's more like Bran Buds for us.

So you can only imagine my delight when the house manager told me that the family had requested a couple of coffee cakes for Christmas morning. Not only could I bake something from the book, I could do it in advance and freeze it. Hooray!

I got right down to business. Cranberry Coffee Cake was make-able without even going to the store, since I had a bag of cranberries in the freezer. And people, it's super-easy--you don't even need any fancy bundt pans because it's baked in a loaf pan.

Here's the basic idea. Chop your thawed cranberries in a food processor with sugar and let them sit in a sieve to drain. I didn't see the "thawed" part and when I realized they couldn't drain while they were frozen, I sat down and read the paper for a while. Bonus.

Then make a cake batter. Now, in my last post I said that Lady Baltimore Cake was a straightforward cake batter, but it was the straightforward: pain-in-the-ass version. This is really, truly straightforward: cream butter and sugar, add eggs, then add flour mix and milk in alternating batches. Voila--cake batter.

Layer the batter and the cranberries in a loaf pan, and bake. So easy! My major regret is that since it's to be served on Christmas I couldn't slice it open and taste it--I'm sure it's beautiful inside and tastes fabulous, because cranberries just do.

(thanks to Lisa Hubbard, who took the above photo for Epicurious)