Vanilla Cranberry Birthday Cake

This cake is adapted from Gourmet's Cranberry Vanilla Coffeecake. I wanted to bake a layer cake for a birthday party using my last leftover cranberries from Thanksgiving (kept in the freezer.) I baked this cake following the recipe exactly once before and love how lovely the cake looked when cut. It had a bright red layer of the berries suspended in the middle of the cake. Too bad I couldn't take any good picture of the cake after it was cut. My camera is crappy in low light.

I made one an a half recipe and baked in 2 9-inch round cake pan for about 40 minutes in 325 degrees oven. I lowered the oven temperature a little because I wanted flat cakes. The cake was frosted with simple cream cheese frosting which I thought was the best part of the cake. Somehow the cake came out very wheaty. I don't know how to explain it. It smelled like I used whole wheat flour in the cake although I didn't. Maybe it's an old bag of flour. Other than the wheaty smell the cake was delicious. It was a little dense but moist, a little sour but sweet enough. And the frosting on it was fluffy and creamy.



Ingredients

• 1 1/2 sticks butter at room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 vanilla bean
• 3 eggs
• 3 cups flour
• 3 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup milk
• 3 cups cranberries (9 oz.)

Directions

1. Adjust the oven rack to upper third and lower third. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease 2 9-inch round pans and line with parchment paper.
2. In a food processor, whirl sugar and scraped seed from the vanilla bean together a few times.
3. Beat butter and 1 3/4 cups sugar together with an electric mixer. Add eggs one at a time. Beat well between each addition.
4. Add cranberries into the food processor and pulse with the remaining sugar until chopped.
5. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt.
6. Stir flour mixture into the batter in 3 batches alternately with milk.
7. Spoon a quarter of the batter into each prepared pan. (I just eyeballed it.) Spread the chopped cranberries over the batter. Spoon the rest of the batter on top.
8. Bake for about 40 minutes. Rotate and switch the pans half way though baking.
9. Let cool in the pan for a couple of minutes then turn into a cooling rack to let cool completely.

Cream cheese frosting

• 1 stick butter at room temperature
• 2 packages of cream cheese at room temperature
• 1 to 2 cups of confectioner sugar

Beat everything together with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add more sugar if the frosting is too watery. Or add a few drops of milk if it's too stiff.