Nana’s Cran-Nog Cake

I’ll be honest … I’ve never been a fan of eggnog. In fact, where did the word “nog” even come from? It’s weird. Yet I do like the concept of eggnog – cream, sugar, eggs and booze. Not something I want to drink straight up, but it does sound like good baking ingredients! After a little (tiny bit) of research, it seems no one really knows where eggnog came from. Most believe it came from England, where they used a wood carved “noggin” for serving alcohol. In my world, your “noggin” is your head … so this was news to me.

In colonial times, they often served a boozy beverage called “grog” – and since that rhymes with “nog” there are folks who believe that’s where eggnog came from. Or we can go back to the Brits again, because their word for ale was “nog.” So where it comes from we don’t really know, but we DO know that LOTS of eggnog is sold around the holidays here in the good old U.S.A. So if the thought of drinking it holds little appeal, how about we bake a nice cake with it?

Patricia Salmeier has a recipe on our website (www.tastefullysimple.com) for Nana’s Cran-Nog Cake, and I decided to give it a whirl. And oh my stars, am I glad I did! It’s perfectly delightful! The details are below, so put your noggin to good use and whip up this noggified cake for the holidays … you’ll be glad you did (and your peeps will think you’re a rock star baker!).

j*a*N*e

Nana’s Cran-Nog Cake

Submitted by Patricia Salmeier (MA)

Ingredients

• Nana’s Apple Cake Mix^®
• 1 cup dried cranberries
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup eggnog
• Cinnamon sugar mixture
• Cool Whip^® or whipped cream

Directions

Combine first 4 ingredients; spread in greased deep-dish pie pan or 8 x 8 baking pan. Bake at 350° for 45-50 minutes. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar while cake is still hot; top with Cool Whip or whipped cream. Makes 9 servings.

Nana’s Cran-Nog Cake

Testing Notes

• I baked this in my mini Bundt^® pan – which is about half the size of a regular Bundt pan. But you could use a regular-sized Bundt pan (your cake will just be a little lower). Or simply use a deep-dish pie pan or and 8×8 pan as the recipe suggests. I like the Bundt, because it looks like a festive holiday wreath.
• I put about 2 tablespoons of butter, 1 tablespoon of cinnamon and sugar, and 1 tablespoon of Caramel Cinnamon Sprinkles in the pan and set it in the oven for a minute to melt. Then I added my batter. This gave the outer edges of the cake a lovely caramelly texture and taste.
• I baked the cake in my mini-Bundt for about 45 minutes. I thought it would take less time, given the hole in the middle of the pan and all, but it really didn’t. I probably could have baked it 40 minutes. This is the hardest part of baking for me … timing it right. But I used the toothpick test to ensure it wasn’t liquid in the middle, which worked well.
• I let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes before inverting it on a cooling rack. The cake did not pop right out … I needed to run a knife around the outer edges as well as around the inner edges in order to get the cake out. A couple of chunks stuck to the pan, but that’s what the whipped cream is for, right?
• Once the cake was completely cool, I topped it with dollops of whipped topping. I have a fun little tool for this that you can see in the photos, but you could easily just dollop the whipped topping on with a spoon.
• Then I drizzled on some Creamy Caramel Sauce, sprinkled on a little cinnamon and sugar, and topped the whole works with Caramel Cinnamon Sprinkles. Festive!
• I used my Cheese Ball Plate as the serving tray, and dressed it up with a couple of sprigs of rosemary and some fresh cranberries.
• The cake itself is quite dense and a little on the heavy side, but not unpleasantly so.
• My family loved this cake – even my darling daughter, who had loudly proclaimed (pre-cake) that SHE wouldn’t be trying ANYTHING with yucky eggnog in it … but the cake turned out so pretty that she couldn’t resist trying it. She ended up giving it a 5½ on a scale from 1-6!

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