Cranberry Orange Bundt Cake is a simple, fruity, Christmassy cake. It is absolutely perfect for the holidays. A delicate, moist cake covered in delicious orange glaze and topped with some tasty sugared cranberries. What more could you want?
Bundt Cake
These cakes are so incredibly easy to make, but they really look impressive. You make the bundt cake in a single bundt cake pan and you don’t need to worry about layering or frosting at all. In fact, a simple glaze – like the one we’re doing here – is often all you need to make an awesome bundt cake.
Generally, bundt cakes are made from a rich, heavy batter that gives you a nice moist crumb. Some of them contain fruit, nuts, and various other flavorsome ingredients. Old-school German bundt cakes like the Bundkuchen were rich, refined affairs. They were often flavored with rosewater and almond, but of course like many traditional foods there was plenty of regional variation.
Bundt cakes as we know them today are satisfying, filling, and they keep remarkably well so you can make one ahead of time. The glaze also helps keep them moist for longer!
Ingredients
To make this cranberry orange bundt cake you’ll need a few key ingredients.
We’ll be generous with the cranberries and rely on some classic baking staples.
- Eggs, yogurt and milk at room temperature
- All-purpose flour
- Butter for a moist, rich, crumby texture
- Light olive oil or canola oil
- Vanilla extract
- Baking soda and baking powder for leavening
- Zest from a whole orange. Don’t skimp on the zest as that’s where our delicious orange flavor will come from!
- Fresh cranberries, rinsed, dried, and tossed in half a tablespoon of flour
- Sugared cranberries for the extra Christmassy decorative touch to your bundt cake
Best Bundt Cake Glaze
By far the best glaze for a bundt cake, in our opinion, is this awesome orange glaze. Typical glazes are a combo of powdered sugar and a liquid such as milk or water. Our glaze uses orange zest and orange juice – perhaps even freshly squeezed from the same orange – to elevate it and really bring your bundt cake to the next level.
It’s a sweeter glaze than you typically get from citrus so it’s perfect for sweet fruit and a nice, indulgent Christmas dessert.
Common Bundt Cake Questions
You want to use a special non-stick bundt cake pan for this. There are many shapes and sizes of bundt cake pan, so it can seem overwhelming, but for this recipe we recommend a 10” diameter 12-cup bundt pan.
You’ll need to adjust your ingredient quantities if you’re making this recipe in a smaller pan. Once you’ve done that, you’re more than welcome to make less cake! Just remember to adjust ingredients in proportion. For example, if your pan is half the size we recommend here, use half the recommended amount of each ingredient.
You can, but dried cranberries alone won’t have the “wow” factor we like here. To plump your cranberries up and get some size on them, take your dried cranberries and soak them in orange juice for fifteen to twenty minutes. Drain them before using and this will work as an effective substitute for fresh cranberries.
You can use frozen cranberries in this recipe, and best of all you don’t even need to thaw them out beforehand.
Take a toothpick and pierce the thickest part of the cake. If the toothpick comes out mostly clean, with a few moist crumbs, your cake is ready to eat. If it comes out with sticky batter, then you need to bake it for a little longer.
Take it out of the oven. Let your cake rest in the pan for about fifteen minutes. Place a wire rack over the pan and carefully – using oven mitts – invert the cake-and-wire contraption. Tap the pan to release the cake and you should have yourself a lovely cake ready to go.
Often, when a bundt cake fails to maintain its structural integrity and collapses on you, it’s because you didn’t adequately butter and flour the pan. Using a non-stick bundt pan also helps prevent this.
Under-baking or turning the cake onto a rack without giving it fifteen minutes’ rest after removing from the oven can also make your cake break up.
More Cake Recipes
If you make this cranberry orange bundt cake be sure to leave a comment or give this recipe a rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐! I will be happy to hear from you!
Cranberry Orange Bundt Cake
Ingredients
- 3 large eggs at room temperature
- 2 cups granulated white sugar
- ½ cup unsalted butter melted and cooled
- 4 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 cup milk
- ⅓ cup yogurt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons corn starch
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon orange zest from 1 orange
- 2¼ cups fresh cranberries rinsed and dried
For the Orange Glaze Topping
- 1½ cup powdered sugar
- 2-3 tablespoons fresh orange juice
- 1 teaspoon orange zest
- 1 cup sugared cranberries optional
Instructions
Cranberry Bundt Cake
- Preheat your oven to 350°F | 175° C. Generously spray a bundt pan with a non-stick baking spray with flour. Alternatively use melted shortening and flour.
- In a large bowl, beat together eggs and sugar for 3-4 minutes on high speed, until the mixture is pale in color.
- Add in the melted butter, vegetable oil, vanilla extract, milk and yogurt.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, corn starch, orange zest, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
- Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients on low speed.
- Fold in the fresh cranberries using a spatula.
- Pour batter into prepared bundt pan. Bake at 350˚F| 175°F for 55-60 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool for 15 minutes in pan then invert onto a wire rack and cool completely before decorating.
- The Orange Glaze
- In a small bowl, combine powdered sugar, freshly squeezed orange juice, and orange zest. Mix until smooth. The consistency will be thick but pourable. If you find it to be too thick, add 1-2 tablespoon orange juice to thin out the glaze and more powdered sugar to thicken it up.
- Once the cake is cooled, pour the glaze over the cake. Decorate with sugared cranberries. Enjoy!
Nutrition
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