Not-Just-for Thanksgiving Cranberry Shortbread Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Jessica of Singleton in the Kitchen. She chose the Not-Just-for Thanksgiving Cranberry Shortbread Cake. Dorie calls this a cake, but it kind of falls between dessert genres. The shortbread makes it very cookie-like. I don’t think it is very cakey at all, but I guess it doesn’t matter too much. If you’d like to get the complete recipe, visit Jessica’s blog. You can also check out how the other Tuesdays with Dorie bloggers fared with this week’s recipe. I think there are some tasty variations out there!

You start by making the cranberry orange filling, which is very similar to making cranberry sauce. I didn’t have an orange but I had some Grand Marnier sauce that I used instead. I just estimated the amount to use, but it worked fine. I tasted the filling after I made it and it was sweet but a little tart. I wanted it to remain a bit of the tartness or you’d never know it was cranberry.

I halved the recipe and made two 4-inch mini cakes. I’m glad I didn’t have to roll the dough out too much since it was super sticky. I refrigerated the dough but probably not enough. Rolling it out to fit a 4-inch pan wasn’t too tough. I baked them for about the same amount of time as the larger cake. They turned out really well and I really liked the combination of the cranberry filling and the tender shortbread. I guess I could have added a little more sugar to the filling, but I didn’t mind it being quite tart. This was a very interesting dessert, not quite a cake but still very good!

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 208-209.