Browned Butter, Orange, and Cranberry Crumb Cake

erininny

Well-known member
I spent the better part of the weekend tearing through my cookbooks and email in an attempt to find this excellent recipe (whose provenance I no longer remember). Am posting it here because it's handy for holiday baking, and the flavor is incredible. I think I'm going to try doing it as a loaf, this year.

(Also posting it here so, if I lose it again, I'll have at least one certain place to look.) smileys/wink.gif

Browned Butter, Orange, and Cranberry Crumb Cake

Topping

1 c. flour

1/2 c. brown sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. salt

2.5 ounces (5 tablespoons) butter

Crumb topping

Combine flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt in mixing bowl. Stir to blend well.

In a small sauté pan, melt butter over medium heat. Continue cooking until the butter

foams and starts to turn a light brown. It will smell “nutty.” At this point, remove from

heat and cool slightly.

Stir browned butter into the reserved dry ingredients to form the large, crumblike topping.

(Would be good with toasted pecan pieces.)

Cake

1 1/2 c. flour

1/2 c. + 2 tbsp. sugar

2 1/4 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. kosher salt

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

grated zest of two oranges

2 tbsp. butter

1 large egg

1/2 c. milk

3 tbsp. orange juice

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 1/2 c. cranberries (fresh, or if frozen, defrost and drain)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9x9 square baking pan.

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and orange zest in a mixing

bowl.

In a small sauté pan, melt the butter over medium heat and continue cooking until the

butter foams, starts to turn a light brown and smells “nutty.” At this point, remove from

the heat and cool slightly. Reserve.

Combine the egg, milk, orange juice and vanilla in a separate mixing bowl and whisk to

blend.

Stir the egg mixture into the reserved dry ingredients. Add the cooled browned butter and

mix just to blend ingredients. Spread this batter into the prepared pan--it will be a small

amount of batter. Distribute the cranberries over the batter, pressing them into the batter

slightly.

Sprinkle the reserved prepared crumb mixture over the cake, pressing down slightly.

Drizzle about 2 tbsp. orange juice over the crumbs.

Bake for approximately 50 minutes until the crumbs are lightly golden and the cake tests

done. Cool completely in the pan.

 
Oh, thanks for finding this, Gay! Makes sense--I used it for Thanskgiving in '04.

No wonder butter figures so prominently in the recipe! smileys/smile.gif

 
Erin...question

Is this a moist cake? In the picture, it looks a little dry. Maybe it's the crumbles?

 
It's really a coffee cake (to me, at least), but you could up the orange juice amount.

Plus, all that butter helps... smileys/wink.gif

 
Ok, this is weird, but the topping part of the recipe I have has different measurements.

In mine, the butter is halved (5 T instead of 10 T). I guess I'd advise anyone who stumbles on this thread to regard the recipe GayR linked to as the canonical version--I can be responsible only for my own baking screwups. smileys/wink.gif

 
Aaaand the topping needs to be tweaked to be sweeter. If you have a fave streusel topping, use that.

And by "you," I mean "self." Grrr, this was supposed to be a gift loaf.

 
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