Orange Cranberry Breakfast Cake

I’m always looking for breakfast baked good recipes and I recently discovered breakfast cakes! They look similar to coffee cakes but minus the crumb toppings.  If you do a search on breakfast cakes, there are a ton of recipes out there.  Sweet, savory or a bit of both —I had no idea! So I decided to make one with oranges since I had so many in my fruit basket.  The turbinado sugar topping and the firm texture of this cake tasted just like a scone.  And it paired so beautifully with my morning coffee.  If you enjoy a scone-like baked good, you’ll love this breakfast cake!

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Ingredients:

• 1 cup of dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup of brandy
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) of unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2/3 cup of sugar
• zest of 1 orange
• 1 egg, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon of homemade vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup of milk, room temperature
• juice of 1 orange (mine rendered 1/3 cup)
• 2 cups of all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• turbinado sugar to sprinkle on top

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease a 9-inch square baking pan.

In a small sauce pan add cranberries and brandy.  Warm through over medium heat, about 5 minutes.  The brandy should evaporate.  Turn off heat and set it aside to cool.

Using a stand mixer cream butter, sugar and orange zest until light and fluffy.  Add egg and vanilla extract and beat until combined.  Then add in milk and orange juice and continue mixing until combined.

In a medium bowl whisk flour, baking powder and salt until combined.  Slowly add in the flour mixture into the wet ingredients.  The batter will be thick.  Fold in 3/4 of the boozy cranberries into the batter and spread it evenly into the greased pan.  Sprinkle the remaining 1/4 of the cranberries on top.  Then sprinkle some turbinado sugar evenly on top of everything else (batter and cranberries).

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until toothpick/tester inserted into the center comes out clean.  Let the breakfast cake cool in the pan on the cooling rack.

Adapted from For the Love of Cooking