A gorgeous cake with bright flavors, this Bundt cake is the perfect cake to brighten the dark days of winter.  Cranberry and orange flavors are highlighted by warm spices, and Lactose-Free yogurt makes this cake extra soft and tender.  Even better, this cake is Completely Sugar Free and Paleo.  It’s a cake you can feel good about eating and sharing.

This recipe is adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Cranberry Spice Bundt Cake as published in the New York Times Cooking.  I wish I could take credit for the incredible spice combination, but it’s all Dorie.  The secret ingredient that you would never know is in there?  Ground coriander.  Amazing.  This recipe is inspiring me to be more daring with my own spice combinations as I develop recipes.

The original recipe is a bit more complicated.  My version here is streamlined and easy.  No mixer required.  It’s a one-bowl recipe.  It’s also terrific the next day, too, so if you’re serving it for a holiday dinner, you can make it a day ahead.  Bundt cakes are always beautiful just as they are, but the white chocolate icing drizzled on top takes this cake to another level. 

I served this cake as dessert for our (belated) holiday dinner, and it was a huge hit.  I also made it during the week just for us at home to eat for breakfast.  Again, it was fantastic.  It’s really a perfect-for-anytime cake, and between the jewel colors of the cranberries and the orange and the fantastic spices, this cake just makes me happy. 

I hope you’ll give it a try.  Amid many baking disasters over the latest winter holiday (cakes that fell apart… yes, plural cakes… and cinnamon rolls that didn’t roll), this cake was the bright star in the dark rainy days of the end of the year.  Please let me know how it turns out for you.  I hope that you love it as much as I do.

Why You’ll LOVE this Recipe:

• Completely Sugar Free
• Paleo and Low Carb
• Gluten Free
• Beautiful presentation
• Easy to make
• Can be made a day ahead

Ingredients for Paleo Sugar Free Cranberry Orange Bundt Cake:

• almond flour
• baking powder           
• kosher salt
• ground cardamom
• ground coriander
• ground ginger
• large eggs
• Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks
• vanilla extract
• liquid stevia
• orange zest
• Lactose-Free plain yogurt
• fresh or frozen cranberries
• white chocolate chips
• coconut oil

Notes on Ingredients:

Orange Zest – Make sure that you use a microplane zester and try to get the biggest orange you can find for maximum orange flavor.  I usually choose a navel orange.

Lactose-Free Plain Yogurt – There’s a wonderful Lactose-Free Plain Yogurt that I am able to find where I live, and it does wonder for cakes.  Yogurt not only adds moisture and tenderness, but the lactic acid adds lift.  However, if you can’t tolerate any yogurt at all, you can substitute coconut milk.  Conversely, if you can tolerate regular yogurt, just use regular plain yogurt. 

Cranberries – You can use fresh or frozen cranberries here.  If you’re using frozen, don’t thaw them (they’ll get mushy if you do and add too much moisture to the cake).  You can toss them into the batter whole if you’re in a rush, but it’s very nice to chop them up a bit first so that the cranberry bits are better distributed throughout the cake and you don’t bite into a big cranberry.

White Chocolate Chips – I use Lily’s White Chocolate Baking Chips to keep this recipe Sugar Free.  All white chocolate does have some dairy in it, so personally, I can’t eat a lot of it.  But the flavor of the white chocolate complements the rest of the cake so well that I like to indulge a little bit… and then take a probiotic afterwards to help my gut handle it.   

Tips for Making Paleo Sugar Free Cranberry Orange Bundt Cake From Scratch

Tip #1

This is a fairly easy recipe, BUT - Don’t forget to dust the Bundt pan after greasing it.  Without a dusting of almond flour, you *might* get lucky and your cake will slide out beautifully, but I have not been lucky that way and the site of a broken Bundt cake is heartbreaking.  The odds are very high that, without dusting the greased pan with almond flour, parts of the top of the cake will break.  So, please, please, please, remember to dust your Bundt pan with almond flour after thoroughly greasing it. 

Tip #2

Chop the cranberries.  Even if they’re frozen, they chop just fine if you go slowly.  It’s worth the extra few minutes to chop the cranberries, because it not only distributes the cranberries more evenly throughout the cake, but also when the cranberries are chopped, they cook better and become more tender.

Tip #3

When you’re making the icing, it’s crucial to use coconut oil with the white chocolate chips.  I have found that white chocolate chips have a tendency to burn more easily than dark chocolate chips.  What I found makes a difference is to mix the coconut oil with the white chocolate chips before putting them in the microwave.  That way, more of the white chocolate chips have some fat on them, and it seems like this helps to prevent burning.  The white chocolate chips might not be completely melted when you pull them out of the microwave.  That’s okay – stir them well.  They should turn very smooth.  If they don’t, then pop them back in the microwave for another 10 seconds at a time until they do turn completely smooth when they stir them.