I had lots of fun baking and cooking with cranberries this month and have one more festive recipe for you before Christmas. This Spiced Cranberry and Pecan Cake is a perfect wholesome cake if you fancy baking something this week, made with wholemeal spelt flour, coconut sugar, spices, fresh cranberries, and pecans.
The cranberries and orange make this cake very zesty and the warm spices festive and cozy. The top is drizzled with melted white chocolate to give it a bit more special look.
I’ve decided to put the cranberries on top of the cake because I wanted that lovely red finish, but you could also stir them into the mixture and top the cake with pecans only if you prefer. The cake on the pictures has about 50g of melted white chocolate on top, but then I added some more for extra sweetness. Do use dairy-free when necessary.
Spiced Cranberry and Pecan Cake
Ingredients
- 200g fresh cranberries (2 cups)
- 280g spelt flour (2 cups)
- 1tsp baking powder
- ½tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1tsp cinnamon
- 1/2tsp ginger
- 1/4tsp cloves
- 1/8tsp nutmeg
- pinch of sea salt
- 1 orange, zest
- 140g coconut sugar (1 cup)
- 3 eggs
- 120ml olive oil (1/2 cup)
- 1tsp vanilla
- 60ml orange juice (1/4 cup)
- 100g pecans, chopped (1 cup)
- 50-100g white chocolate, dairy-free when necessary
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan)
- Grease and line 9" round spring form cake baking tin.
- In a bowl whisk together spelt flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg and salt. Whisk in orange zest and set aside.
- In a electric hand or stand up mixer whisk eggs and sugar for about 5 min, add olive oil and vanilla and mix for 2 more min.
- Slowly add dry mix to the wet mix together with the orange juice and mix until combined.
- Stir in half the amount of chopped pecans by hand.
- Spoon the mixture into your prepared tin and level the surface.
- Top with cranberries and rest of the chopped pecans.
- Bake for about 45 min or until a cocktail stick comes out clean.
- Remove from the oven once ready and leave to cool down for 20 min before removing from the tin.
- While the cake is cooling gently melt the white chocolate in double boiler and leave to cool down a bit.
- Once ready place the cake on a cake stand and drizzle with the melted white chocolate.
- Serve and enjoy!
Lovely cake with a fabulous flavour – just need to decide what to use instead of cranberries now that the season has passed as I will not be waiting long to bake this again.
Hi Lisa, thank you so much for coming back and leaving me such lovely comment. I’m so happy you’ve enjoyed this recipe. You could replace the cranberries with any seasonal fruit and just adjust the spices to suit the fruit flavour – apples, pears, blueberries, cherries, blackberries would all work well.
Me again – its cranberry time – yipee. Unfortunately I am no longer able to have spelt flour – what would be your suggestions for this cake?
Hi Lisa, you can use any of my gluten-free flour mixes from my other recipes. Try something like this. Alternatively use shop bought gluten-free flour mix. Add extra orange juice or some plant-based milk if needed.
100g ground walnuts or almonds (1 cup)
70g teff or buckwheat flour (1/2 cup)
95g brown rice flour (3/4 cup)
30g tapioca flour (1/4 cup)