Happy New Year everyone!!

Lemon & Cranberry are such wonderful flavours in their own right. To celebrate the start of a new year, I decided to bring them together into a pound cake. Hope your year is also bursting with refreshing and amazing flavours like this cake!

Lemon zest is added to the batter which gives a nice perfume to the cake. The dried cranberries are steeped into lemon juice to soften them and extract the maximum flavour from both (this idea is inspired by Joy of Baking).

I’ve used a medium loaf pan for this cake (8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch), the recipe can easily be doubled and baked in a bundt pan too.

Ingredients –

Pound Cake –
Unsalted Butter – 90 grams at room temperature
Granulated sugar – 240 grams
Lemon Zest – 1 tbsp
2 large eggs
Vanilla essence – 1 tsp
Salt – 1/4 tsp
Baking Soda – 1/2 tsp
All-purpose flour – 180 grams
Yoghurt (room temperature) 100 ml/grams
Dried Cranberries – 50 grams
Lemon Juice – 2 tbsp

Soaking Syrup –
Granulated white sugar – 1/4 cup
Water – 1/4 cup
Lemon juice – 1 tbsp

Glaze –
Icing Sugar – 50 grams
Lemon Juice – 1-1.5 tbsp (to get the right consistency)

Procedure – 

1. In a small pan, put the dried cranberries and 2 tbsp lemon juice and bring to boil. Remove from heat and cover the pan. Let it sit for about 1 hour before you start making the batter for the cake.
P.S. – If there’s a lot of juice, drain the cranberries. Use the juice for soaking the cake instead of syrup.
2. Prepare a loaf pan by buttering the sides and putting a parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 180 deg C.
3. Rub the lemon zest into the sugar and keep aside. Sift the flour, salt and baking soda together and keep aside.
4. Using a hand mixer/whisk, cream together butter and sugar for about 5-7 minutes until light & fluffy.
5. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well. Add vanilla extract.
6. Add the flour in 3 additions alternating with the yoghurt. Before the last addition of flour, add the soaked cranberries as well.
7. Pour the batter into the pan and level the batter.
8. Bake the cake for about 50-55 minutes till a skewer inserted comes out clean.
9. While the cake is baking, prepare your soaking syrup – in a pan, bring the sugar and water to a boil. Remove from heat and add the lemon juice.
10. Once the cake is out of the oven, brush it with the soaking syrup – either the juice left from preparing the cranberries or the syrup made above. Let it cool completely.
11. Prepare the glaze – mix lemon juice and icing sugar together to get a glaze of pourable consistency. Drizzle it on top of the cooled cake before slicing and serving.