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]
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.
Chill in refrigerator 3 hours or overnight. Unmold. Slice and serve with whipped or any desired ice cream
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
Directions
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.
Chill in refrigerator 3 hours or overnight. Unmold. Slice and serve with whipped or any desired ice cream
Yield: 6 servings
Notes
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.
It seems likely that your cake did not set up because you used a homemade sauce. Probably the taste was superior, though. Canned sauces would contain jelling agents and that would make a difference to setting.
I bet this would be even better if served a bit on the frozen side. Ooh! And with a layer of whipped cream in the middle!
Hmmm…
I totally agree about the extra jelling agents, but the recipe calls for the homemade sauce from the book. Maybe I didn’t use enough cranberries?
Or a layer of ice cream!!!!
Cranberries are incredibly high in pectin and almost never require extra jelling agents. It’s possible it giddy never quite got hot enough to fully activate the pectin in the cranberries. Maybe try cooking the sauce a little longer if you do it again.
I’ve made the homemade jellied cranberry sauce a couple of times and it set up much better with the addition of a little pectin.
I came across two books you may enjoy: “Consider the Fork” by Bee Wilson is a history of cooking utensils, and “The Food of a Younger Land” by Mark Kurlansky is based on WPA research (that was never turned into a book at the time) about what people ate across the US.
I’m a long time fan, thanks for the blog.
This looks delicious and I totally approve of your idea to add a layer of ice cream in the middle. YUM! 😀 The picture of you holding the cranberry looks like a professional ad — you have lovely hands (mine look sort of muppet-like minus the fur).
Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. I’m grateful for all the food, fun, and Tom tasting faces you’ve provided this year. Sending my best wishes for 2021 to you, Tom, Alex, and TJ!
Thank you, Marty! I hope you had a wonderful holiday as well, and thank you for all your comments and support! 🙂
I think it needs some orange zest and a layer of “whipped topping “