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Today we have a fun idea that changes cranberry sauce into a dessert!

This is Cranberry Cold Cake!

AuthorRetroRuth

From Lilly Wallace Cookbook, 1941

[cooked-sharing]

 4 tbsp butter
 2 cups graham cracker crumbs
 2 ½ cups cranberry sauce

1

Melt butter. Mix with crumbs. Line a square mold with wax paper. Place alternative layers of crumbs and sauce in mold, with crumbs on top. Pack solid.

2

Chill in refrigerator 3 hours or overnight. Unmold. Slice and serve with whipped or any desired ice cream
Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

 4 tbsp butter
 2 cups graham cracker crumbs
 2 ½ cups cranberry sauce

Directions

1

Melt butter. Mix with crumbs. Line a square mold with wax paper. Place alternative layers of crumbs and sauce in mold, with crumbs on top. Pack solid.

2

Chill in refrigerator 3 hours or overnight. Unmold. Slice and serve with whipped or any desired ice cream
Yield: 6 servings

Notes

Cranberry Cold Cake

I always love the red-speckled white cranberries. They look like they could be beautiful bird’s eggs.

This came together really easily, even though I had to make my own cranberry sauce. I used two, 12 oz bags of fresh cranberries and made by sauce right before I started putting this together. It was just a simple recipe from the same cookbook that the cold cake was from, but it was almost exactly the same as the one on the back of the bag of cranberries. The only real difference was that the water and sugar were brought to a boil before you added the berries.

I wanted the sauce to gel in cake form, not before, which is why I made it fresh. If you use canned, I would suggest heating up whatever cranberry sauce you use to remold it to cake shape.

After I put this layer of waxed paper on the top of this, I made sure to press down gently but firmly to make sure it was packed as tightly as it could be.

However, mine didn’t want to unmold. Even after an overnight in the fridge. It just was not that firm.

You can see what I am talking about here. There is a failed attempt at serving it up in the top corner of the pan. It was set enough to hold it’s shape, but it wasn’t quite set enough to slice and bring a piece out without lots of swearing.

Don’t worry, the kids didn’t hear me. I was swearing under my breath.

But check it out! Layers!!! I totally thought that the cranberry sauce would completely soak into the graham cracker crumbs and be like this giant cube of mush. But there are layers!

“Don’t eat that cranberry on the top, it’s still frozen.”

*clink clink*

“Okay, I won’t”

“This is cranberries, right?

“Yes.”

“Then it’s guaranteed to be delicious.”

“How is it?”

“It’s pretty good. It tastes like cranberry sauce…except with graham crackers.”

The Verdict: Cranberry-Sauced Graham Crackers

From The Tasting Notes –

This was easy to make, and it was good. If you close your eyes right now and picture what a graham cracker would taste like if you used it like it’s a spoon to scoop up cranberry sauce, that would be exactly what this tasted like. But the form was fun and different. And it actually made cranberry sauce into a dessert.  The kids loved the layers, and they had fun piling whipped cream AND Pumpkin Crunch Ice Cream on their pieces in great quantities.

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