So, out of boredom and as a way to bite my thumb Shakesperean-style at my attempts to eat sensibly I decided that it was time to try baking something this evening. The candidate? Well, in the freezer I saw a bag of frozen cranberries. As such I decided to do a cranberry buckle.
I documented the last time I made a buckle. In that case it was blueberry and was quite the hit at the party I brought it to. The recipe is really easy to slap together. The ingredients are pretty basic; you really are likely to have the ingredients in the kitchen. That’s the other reason I decide to do this recipe. I mean, it’s easy to do on a bit of a whim. This time around, I decided to swap the blueberries for cranberries, and just out of curiosity I decided to use nutmeg in the streusel instead of cinnamon.
So, here’s the end result:
I say it turned out rather well. It looks really nice, doesn’t it? Compared to the blueberry buckle I made in January, it’s a bit shorter in height. That’s because I didn’t double the cake part of the recipe. I figured that since it’s just the three of us there’s no need to have that much cake. We had it about an hour ago with some Earl Grey tea.
Well, I’m pleased with it. It’s a nice coffee cake that isn’t very sweet. The issue I had with it though is that I totally forgot about how cranberries are pretty tart. It’s not that the cake was inedible–obviously not because we went through half of it already–but it’s certainly a change from the sweetness of the blueberry. If I use cranberries in this recipe again, I think I’ll need to find a way to cut down on the tartness and/or introduce a little more sweetness. The combination of orange and cranberries seems to be a popular. I wonder if orange zest would be enough though to balance it out. I ask this because I really do not want to add orange juice to the cake batter.
I think the other issue I had was with the streusel change that I made. Using nutmeg was kind of nice. It added a little hint of warmth and spiciness. Still, I don’t feel it was a total match for the recipe. I missed the cinnamon! Usually when I do this recipe the whole lower floor smells great due to the cinnamon. This time, I almost feel like the aroma was very localized. I think next time I’ll try reverting to using cinnamon and adding nutmeg for the warmth.
I’m not going to call this a failure, because it clearly wasn’t at all. I will say though that the next time I make a cranberry-based buckle I’ll have the knowledge to be able to tweak the cake into something better.
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