Cranberry Orange Layer Cake

ANOTHER recipe? Yes! For good reason. Today is my wonderful husband, Matthew's, birthday. I knew I wanted to make him a yummy cake from scratch, and cranberry orange is just kind of what came to mind. It was pretty difficult as this is the first cake I've created a recipe for, so go easy on me! However, it passed his test and it passes mine! 

This cake is fresh and relatively simple. I considered switching out the cranberries for dark red cherries, but I knew I'd really like the look of cranberries on top rather than cherry 😂 But if you'd prefer cherries, they'd go really well with orange as well! Also, I wanted to use cranberry preserves with the frosting I made for the filling, but couldn't find them anywhere. So if you happen to know exactly where you can get cranberry preserves rather than juice, I'd suggest using that. If you do, you'll need less cranberry preserves than the amount of juice I have listed in the ingredients list. You'll have to play around with it a little. Start with a small amount and add more as needed. Let me know if you tried it this way! I'd love to know how it turns out!

Here is the recipe for Matthew's yummy cranberry orange birthday cake:

For orange cake:

3 cups flour

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 c unsalted butter

2 c sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup milk

Zest of one orange

Juice from half of 1 orange

For filling frosting (see recipe for outside frosting): 

5 c powdered sugar

1/3 cup butter 

1 1/2 tsp vanilla 

1/2 tablespoon milk

4 tbsp cranberry juice

For garnish on the finished cake (optional):

Cranberries

Dried orange slices (I found mine at Trader Joe's)

1. Preheat oven to 400. Butter two round 9in cake pans. 

2. In a large mixing bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt with a fork. Mix in butter the butter on a slow speed. Mix in sugar one cup at a time. The mixture should look like damp sand when you’re finished. 

3. Beat in eggs, then beat in vanilla and milk slowly at first, then work your way up to medium speed. Lastly, grate the zest of an orange onto the mixture and squeeze half an orange’s juice onto the mixture. Stir in until just combined. Make sure not to overwork the batter. 

4. Split batter evenly into the two buttered 9in round cake pans. Bake for around 30 minutes. Let cool for five minutes before taking cakes out of pans and setting wire racks to finish cooling. 

5. While cooking, create the frosting. There are two different types of frosting I used. One for the inside, and one for the outside of the cake. The interior frosting contains cranberry juice, so the frosting turns out a pastel pink. While that's okay for the inside, I wanted the outside to just be white. For the outside frosting, I used this buttercream.  When you have both frostings whipped up, transfer into piping bags or large ziplock bags, and store in the refrigerator until cakes completely cool. 

6. When cakes are completely cool, shave the rounded side of each cake off, so they’re both completely flat. Take the cranberry frosting, and pipe onto the top of whichever layer you have decided is your bottom layer (if it's in a ziplock bag, you'll need to cut the corner off of one end to pipe out). 

Spread over the top of it evenly, allow it to remain thick. 

Lightly set the top layer on top of that, and frost with the Betty Crocker white frosting. Arrange cranberries and dried orange slices however you would like to finish off your cake. Enjoy!

  

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