Cranberry Cake with Hot Butter Sauce

My mother-in-law’s cooking is legendary among all who knew her. Sadly, I am not one of those people. She died a couple of years before I met my husband. Some of her recipes have achieved mythic fame in her memory and I hear about them from my husband, father-in-law and others. Many of the dishes she was best known for were baked goods. Her Bulgar Wheat Bread, Blue Prune Pie and Cranberry Cake with Hot Butter Sauce are mentioned time and again as being her signature dishes. I am blessed that she sent her son off to set up housekeeping with a small file box of her best recipes and it does include copies of each of those as well as many others. Of course there is one little problem for my family. We can’t have wheat which is an integral part to each of those recipes. I don’t think the bread is possible on a grain free diet but the other two I have made grain free versions of several times. Since the Cranberry Cake was a Christmas tradition for my husbands family that is the one I will post about here. This was our desert on Christmas Day. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

So without further ado

• 1/2 cup grassfed butter or Coconut Oil melted
• 1/4 cup Honey or 1/2 cup Medjool Dates *
• 1/4 cup Coconut Milk, kefir, or yogurt
• 9 pastured eggs
• 3/4 tsp Sea Salt
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 3/4 cup Coconut Flour
• 1/8 tsp baking soda
• 2 cups cranberries fresh or frozen
• Lard or Palm Shortening to grease the pan

Hot Butter Sauce

• 1 cup butter
• 2 tbsp raw honey or to taste *

Preheat oven to 350.

Grease a 8 by 8-Inch Square Cake Pan and set aside.

I use my Vitamix to make this recipe. You can probably also use a regular blender or Hand Blender. The only question I have is about pureeing the dates with a lower powered blender. That may require you to heat up the coconut milk and soak them in that till soft first.

If you are using the dates put them and the coconut milk into a blender and puree. If you need more liquid add more ingredients from the recipe and blend till smooth. (There will still be tiny bits of date, that is ok.)

Or if you are using honey simply add it and the coconut milk to the blender.

Then add the melted butter, eggs, salt and vanilla. Blend till smooth.

Add in the coconut flour and baking soda and blend until there are no lumps.

Allow it to rest for about 5 minutes at this point and it will thicken up a lot. Fold in the cranberries. Pour into the 8×8 pan and smooth the top. It won’t settle much while baking.

Bake for 35 min for fresh or thawed cranberries. Add about 20 min to that time for still frozen cranberries.

It is done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

While it is cooling melt the 1 cup of butter over low heat. When it is melted move to a serving container and mix in 2 tbsp raw honey. The honey sinks to the bottom so stir before and while serving. Pour the hot butter sauce over individual pieces of cake on the plate or serve it on the side. This is best served while the cake is still warm.

* A note about the sweetness of this recipe. We find it to be plenty sweet as written but some may want to increase the honey in the cake and in the butter sauce. You could double it in both and they will be more of a level of sweetness of conventional baked goods.

Enjoy!