Orange Cranberry Coffee Cake with almond streusel is a great holiday cake for brunch! Can be made with fresh, frozen, or dried cranberries.
This is a cranberry sour cream coffee cake born of my love from cake for breakfast, and some of my favorite festive flavors. It's not a traditional Classic Coffee Cake but is one of our favorites around the holidays! The almond streusel and orange glaze on top of the cranberry cake is my FAVORITE.
Cranberry and orange cake is now a favorite weekend (breakfast) and holiday treat for us, especially Christmas and Thanksgiving when we aren't making The Best Orange Rolls Ever.
This recipe uses fresh or frozen cranberries, not canned. If you're looking for a great dessert with cranberry sauce, I'd try easy cranberry jello.
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What To Expect
- Taste: Cranberry almond cake is moist and not too sweet, with fresh tart cranberries and orange zest (and juice) in it with a crunchy almond sugar streusel on top. It's a lovely combination!
- Ease: This is a pretty straightforward recipe, mixing wet ingredients first and then dry ingredients before combining them.
- Time: It takes a few minutes to mix up the cake, 35-45 minutes to bake, and another 10-15 minutes to cool before putting on the glaze. It's easy to make ahead and refrigerate before baking in the morning!
🛒 Key Ingredients
- Cranberries - can use fresh or frozen, just make sure they're thawed first. If using dried, make sure you rehydrate them using my recipe notes below.
- Oranges - both zest and fresh juice are used in the cake, and orange juice concentrate is in the delicious glaze on top!
- Sour Cream - makes the cake light and moist when baked.
- Almonds - sliced, are AMAZING in the perfect sugary streusel on top of the cake!
- Almond Extract - adds a little boost in flavor to the cake and helps the cranberry flavor pop! It's delicous. You can add a little to the almond streusel topping too if you really love almond flavor like we do.
See the recipe card below for full information on ingredients and quantities.
✏️ Substitutions & Variations
- Sour Cream - can be substituted with plain greek yogurt, or even buttermilk. I would reduce the amount to ⅓ cup if using buttermilk however.
- Granulated white sugar - can be swapped out with coconut sugar.
- Some readers have successfully used gluten free flour (Bob's Red Mill) to make this recipe gluten free.
🧑🍳 Instructions
Make sure you preheat the oven to 350 ℉ and line a 9x9 inch baking dish with parchment paper or spray with baking spray.
- Step 1. Using an electric mixer, cream together butter and sugar for 2 minutes until fluffy.
- Step 2. Add eggs, vanilla, and almond extract, mixing well for 1 minute.
- Step 3. Add sour cream, zest of one orange, and fresh squeezed orange juice (should equal about ¼ cup - 60 mL) and mix well.
- Step 4. In separate bowl combine flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Add to wet ingredients and mix until just combined and all flour pockets are gone, careful not to overmix.
- Step 5. Gently stir in cranberries (above left image), then spread into prepared 9X9 baking dish (above right image) .
- Step 6. In small bowl combine the butter, sugar, and flour and mix with a fork, breaking up the butter in to small pieces (above left image) . Add in the sliced almonds and mix well (above right image). The streusel and glaze are optional but SO GOOD.
- Step 6. Sprinkle evenly over cake batter. Bake on a middle shelf in the oven for 40-45 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Allow cake to cool for 10-15 minutes or the glaze will melt into the cake.
- Step 7. While the cake is cooling, combine ingredients for the orange glaze: the orange juice concentrate, powdered sugar, and vanilla (above left image) and mix until smooth. (above right image). Drizzle over cake evenly, slice, and enjoy!
📌 Top Tips & Hacks
- Make in a muffin tin for cranberry orange muffins! Bake at 350℉ for 16-18 minutes until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
- If you use frozen cranberries, make sure they are completely thawed before adding to your cake batter.
- Make the cake batter ahead and refrigerate overnight to make it super easy to bake in the oven in the morning for a lovely holiday breakfast or brunch! It will take a few minutes longer to bake from a cold fridge but it's worth it.
❓Frequently Asked Questions
1. Measure out desired amount of dried cranberries into heat-safe mixing bowl. ¾ cup dried cranberries would equal about 1 cup fresh cranberries in a recipe.
2. Pour boiling water over dried cranberries in a bowl until covered.
3. Wait 15-20 minutes, drain the cranberries, and then use in recipe.
Yes! Just make sure you double all of the ingredients ingredients. Follow instructions and bake in a 9x13 inch pan at 350 ℉ for 50-60 minutes, or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. You may want to cover lightly with tinfoil the last 15 minutes or so to protect the almonds from getting too toasted on top.
Yes! I have made the cake and refrigerated it overnight before baking it in the morning. It adds a few minutes on to the baking time, but it's so nice to have it already made.
It could be because the orange zest may be a little overbaked, or there is too much pith (the white underlayer on the orange under the peel) in the cake.
🎄 More Holiday Recipes
Did You Try This Recipe? ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Make sure to leave a star rating and a comment below the recipe card. I love hearing from you, and it is so helpful to other readers! Better yet, share it with family and friends. Thank you!!
📝 Printable Recipe
Cranberry Orange Coffee Cake
Ingredients
Cake Batter:
- ¾ cup (1.5 sticks) salted butter, softened 170 g
- ¾ cup white granulated sugar 175 g
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 -½ teaspoons almond extract
- ½ cup sour cream (or plain greek yogurt) 130 g
- zest of 1 orange, about 2 teaspoons
- ¼ cup fresh orange juice (juice of 1 orange) 60 mL
- 1-½ cups all purpose flour 205 g
- ½ teaspoon salt 4 g
- 1 teaspoon baking powder 4 g
- ½ teaspoon baking soda 3 g
- 1-½ cups frozen(thawed) or fresh cranberries, or about 1 cup dried cranberries rehydrated 160 g
Almond Sugar Topping:
- ¼ cup butter, softened 57 g
- ⅓ cup white granulated sugar 58 g
- ¼ cup all purpose flour 34 g
- 1 cup sliced almonds 100 g
Orange Glaze
- 2 Tablespoons orange juice concentrate, thawed
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup powdered sugar 115 g
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 ℉. Prepare 9X9 inch baking dish with baking spray or parchment paper.
- Using an electric mixer, cream together butter and sugar for 2 minutes until fluffy.
- Add eggs, vanilla, and almond extract and mix for 1 minute, until mixture is fluffy.
- Add sour cream, zest of one orange, and orange juice and mix well.
- In separate bowl combine flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Add to wet ingredients and mix until just combined and all flour pockets are gone, careful not to overmix.
- Gently stir in cranberries, then spread into prepared 9X9 inch baking dish.
For the Almond Sugar Topping:
- In small bowl combine the butter, sugar, and flour and mix with a fork, breaking up the butter in to small pieces. Add in the sliced almonds and gently stir well. Sprinkle evenly over cake batter.
- Bake at 350 ℉ on a middle shelf for 40-45 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Allow cake to cool for 10-15 minutes before glazing or the glaze could melt into the cake.
- While cake is cooling, combine ingredients for the orange glaze, and mix until smooth. Drizzle over cake evenly. Enjoy!
Notes
- Measure out desired amount of dried cranberries into heat-safe mixing bowl. ¾ cup dried cranberries would equal about 1 cup fresh cranberries in a recipe.
- Pour boiling water over dried cranberries until covered.
- Wait 15-20 minutes before using in recipe.
Alex says
hi, i was just wondering if you could make this in a round cake pan ? xxxx
Sara says
Hi Alex, I’m sure you could. Baking time would depend on width of the pan. An 8 or 9 inch pan would work well and the baking time would be about the same. Cheers!
Victoria Trotter says
Sounds wonderful but what happened to the cranberries going into the cake. ?? They are not there. !!
Sara says
Hi Victoria, I’m not quite sure what you mean. They are clearly listed in the ingredient list as the last ingredient to go in the batter. I hope that helps.
Katie says
This works well to make gluten free, just use a 1-to-1 gluten free flour mix (Bob's Red Mill is what I usually use, but have used other brands in the past with success!). Also, in the instructions I think step 4 and 5 are mixed up (just fyi, the instructions before the recipe were very clear and helped me figure things out right away). Thank you for a great recipe, our entire family enjoys it (gluten free, with no fuss) for breakfast a few times a year. 😊