Cranberry Cake With Vanilla Butter Sauce, THM S

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One of my favorite desserts turned sugar free and low carb!

I’m so excited about this cranberry cake recipe! This yummy dessert has been a favorite of mine for years. I have even made it for my birthday dessert. I recently was going through my recipe box and came across this recipe, and knew it was definitely one that I had to make healthy!

It’s always so exciting when it dawns on me that I don’t have to say good bye to my favorite desserts. I can revamp them into a recipe that is not only still delicious, but doesn’t spike blood sugar levels or cause crazy sugar cravings!

Perfect for holidays and brunches

This yummy cake is one I can recommend for any time of year. But being as the holidays are right around the corner, I can especially recommend it right now! It would definitely be the perfect dessert for a holiday meal or get together. Studded with cranberries and sitting in a pool of luscious butter sauce, it really has a very festive feel!

I LOVE making brunches. It is so fun to get fancy with my favorite meal of the day. I can totally picture this cake as making a fantastic addition to a brunch menu, so don’t limit it to dessert only. It is low carb and sugar free, after all!

Warm vanilla butter sauce. Need I say more?

In the original recipe, the star of the cake was definitely the warm, deliciously sweet sauce that got poured over top. In fact, I could name some family members who would eat this cake just for the sauce, lol.

This recipe is no different! The sauce makes it absolutely perfect and is super easy to whip up. You can store it in the fridge and simple reheat leftovers in the microwave or on the stove top whenever you are feeling like a piece of this delicious cake!

Third time is a charm

This is one of the first baking recipes I have attempted to convert. My very first was this Chocolate Cream Cheese Cupcake recipe. The cupcakes use peanut flour and turned out great my first attempt.

This cranberry cake, however, proved to be a bit trickier. While it tasted good right from my first try, it was a lot more moist and dense than I wanted. After two attempts, I made some major changes the third time and finally nailed it! I was pretty excited to cut into my third cake and see that nice, beautiful crumb.

Low carb baking is a different game

Compared to regular baking, switching over to low carb, gluten and sugar free desserts can be a bit tricky at first. You don’t have the gluten that is present in white flour to give the rise and airiness. I learned a lot developing this recipe! I’m super excited to take what I’ve learned and continue to dive into the low carb baking world!

I love cooking, but taking a dessert you’ve always loved, especially a baked dessert, and turning it into something you can eat guilt free, has it’s own unique satisfaction!

A few things I learned

I am definitely not an expert and still have basically no idea what I’m doing when testing baking recipes, lol. I simply mix this and that together, slide it into the oven, and hope for the best! Just kidding, I do have a faint idea of what I’m doing now, thanks to this recipe.

Here are a couple things I’ve learned so far, in case you want to try your hand at converting a recipe!

Use less flour than the original recipe calls for

The original recipe called for 1 1/2 cups of flour. Since I like to use equal amounts of almond, coconut and flax flours as my low carb baking blend, I went with half a cup of each. My batter ended up very stiff though, so I added in nut milk to make it the consistency I wanted. I think this was part of the reason it ended up to dense and slightly soggy in the center.

In the final recipe I used only 1/3 a cup of each flour for a 9 inch baking pan.

Use lots of eggs

Since I suspected the nut milk I had added to the recipe to thin the batter was part of my problem, I had to find another liquid source. I had already added in more eggs than the recipe called for. But after doing some research online I was starting to see that a lot of the low carb recipes use a surprising amount of eggs. I even made one of these recipes just to see what the crumb was like. So technically, I guess I made four cakes in this process…..

I upped my egg amount even more, included extra Greek yogurt, and completely omitted any nut milk. I could tell right away that the batter was going to turn out great, even before I cooked it!

Beat those eggs

While reading some low carb baking tips I found online, I saw the suggestion to beat your eggs well to add extra fluffiness.

The combination of all these little tweaks worked! I’m very happy with the texture of my final result.

More resources:

If you are interested in learning even more about how to bake with alternative flours and sweeteners, here are some great posts:

Baking With Almond Flour from All Day I Dream About Food

Baking With Coconut Flour from All Day I Dream About Food

Top Tips And Tricks For Successful Trim Healthy Mama Baking from Northern Nester

Ok, here’s the recipe for this cranberry cake with vanilla butter sauce!

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