Cranberry Orange Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

This cranberry orange cake with cream cheese frosting is bursting with holiday flavors. Perfectly moist with the softest cake crumb – the combination of sweet oranges and tart cranberries makes it perfect for Christmas.

It’s not even Christmas until you’ve had some sort of orange cranberry baked good. Am I right? The flavors and scent of those two fruits together just sings! Have you tried our orange cranberry bliss bars?? Or our cranberry orange bubble bread (perfect for Christmas morning!)?? Now you can try this orange cranberry cake too!

Oh hi there! My name’s Fiona and I’m so excited to meet you! I blog over at Just So Tasty, and today’s my first guest post on Oh Sweet Basil.

I love baking, eating cake, and listening to country music. (Is that embarrassing? The country music part I mean???) And making tasty treats for the people I love is one of my absolute favorite things.

I was so excited when Carrian asked me to share recipes on Oh Sweet Basil, so today I’m starting off with this easy Cranberry Orange Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. It’s a perfectly moist vanilla sheet cake infused with fresh oranges and dotted with tart cranberries. Then it’s frosted with tangy cream cheese icing and decorated with sugared cranberries and orange zest.

What Do I Need to Make Cranberry Orange Cake?

Here is just a quick list of the ingredients so you can get an overview of what you will need. All the measurements and details can be found in the recipe card down below.

Sugared Cranberries

• Granulated Sugar
• Water
• Fresh Cranberries

Cranberry Orange Cake

• Dry Ingredients: Cake Flour, Baking Powder, Baking Soda, and Salt
• Wet Ingredients: Unsalted Butter, Granulated Sugar, Egg Whites, Vanilla Extract, Milk, Sour Cream
• Cranberries tossed in Flour to keep them from sinking in the cake
• Orange Zest and Juice (fresh)

Cream Cheese Frosting

• Unsalted Butter
• Cream Cheese
• Powdered Sugar
• Whipping Cream or Milk
• Orange Zest

How to Make Cranberry Orange Cake

There are three different parts to this recipe – the sugared cranberries (used for aesthetic reason and are optional), the cake and the frosting. Here are the basic steps for making this cake:

Sugared Cranberries

1. Dissolve some of the sugar into the water in a medium sized saucepan over medium heat to create a simple syrup.
2. Stir in the fresh cranberries until they are well coated and then remove the berries with a slotted s

Orange Cranberry Bliss Bars

Leftover Cranberry Sauce Muffins with Streusel Topping

Grab that leftover cranberry sauce and make these sweet and tart cranberry sauce muffins. They make a great breakfast or brunch!

Last year I got fed up with all the leftover cranberry sauce so for months after, I tried sticking it in and on everything trying to find the best ways to use it. You can only eat leftover Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches for so many days before you’re totally burned out. In fact, our leftover Thanksgiving turkey sliders is a fabulous way to use leftover cranberry sauce, but I still wanted to find something different. These heavenly cranberry sauce muffins with streusel crumb topping were born.

Recommended Equipment

• Muffin Tin
• Stand Mixer

Before You Begin…

Make sure you have your cranberry sauce ready to go. Hopefully you have leftovers from Thanksgiving so this step is already done. You can make it homemade or use store bought cranberry sauce. I’ve linked to our homemade cranberry sauce recipe in the recipe card.

What Do I Need to Make Cranberry Sauce Muffins?

I’m going to divide the list of ingredients up between the streusel topping and the muffin batter. Jump on the streusel topping first…

For the Streusel

• All-Purpose Flour: gives the streusel topping structure
• Light Brown Sugar: adds sweetness and rich flavor
• Kosher Salt: enhances all the flavors
• Cinnamon: adds warmth and that classic fall flavor
• Ground Cardamom: I love the flavor of a little cardamom with cranberry sauce!
• Butter: binds the streusel together, the key to a good streusel

For the Batter

• Sugar: adds sweetness and balances out the tart cranberry sauce
• Vegetable Oil: adds needed fat and moisture to the muffins
• Eggs: give the muffins structure and rise
• <

This tangy, sweet homemade cranberry sauce with lemon trumps anything you can buy at the store.

Do you know how easy it is to make cranberry sauce? If you can boil water, I promise you can make cranberry sauce.

For years, I bought cranberry sauce in a can and my husband and boys ate every last bit of it. They clearly enjoy cranberry sauce. We even bought an extra can or two every year, just for the leftovers.

I love so many other cranberry recipes, from cranberry apple pie to Christmas cake, cranberry jalapeno dip to cranberry pancakes. But cranberry sauce? That was never my thing. It was only ever something we had for the boys in the house – until now.

Cranberry Sauce with Lemon

About a dozen years ago, that changed for me. I tried a sandwich that stacked turkey with cranberry sauce and I fell in love with the combination.

It was not a sugary sweet cranberry sauce, it was tangy and just a bit sweet at the same time. I now understand why so many people think it just isn’t Thanksgiving without the cranberry sauce.

I’ve made cranberry sauce a few different ways over the past 10 or so years, but this cranberry sauce with lemon is my favorite version. This is the easiest of the Thanksgiving side dishes to make ahead of time for the holidays too.

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Fresh cranberries and a hint of lemon are combined in this incredibly moist brown sugar streusel Cranberry Coffee Cake.

Cranberry Coffee Cake

There is just something about sitting down mid-morning with a fresh cup of coffee and a piece of coffee cake. It gives me a nostalgic feeling of when times were a bit slower and a neighbor might have stopped by to gossip after the kids left for school.

I know it is a bit of a small-town romantic notion, and perhaps I should turn off the holiday Hallmark movies. Regardless, I will just enjoy my cup of coffee with a piece of cranberry cake and a good book or phone call to catch up with a friend.

Cranberry Coffee Cake is not an overly sweet or fluffy cake. It’s a richly dense coffee cake with a lovely tartness from the cranberries.

When I say rich though, it is not sweet rich. The richness comes from the butter, eggs, and sour cream. Topped with buttery sugar topping it is perfect for a holiday brunch gathering.

If cranberries are not in season, (or if you do not currently have them stashed in your freezer) this cake will work nicely with blueberries as well. Frozen cranberries may be stirred into the batter straight from the freezer.

This coffee cake is really one of the easiest things you can make. Creaming the butter and sugar together smoothly is the first step. Add your remaining liquids and eggs.

Alternate adding the dry ingredients stirring just until combined each time. Take care to not overmix. One or two quick passes with your sp