Easy holiday cranberry cake with hot butter sauce

If you have a habit of buying too many cranberries around the holidays, save this recipe for cranberry cake.

This vanilla-scented cake has pops of tart cranberries balanced by a hot butter sauce. Yes, you read that right: hot butter sauce. The cake is best served warm for the ultimate cold-weather treat.

“My mother got this recipe from the newspaper sometime in the 1950s,” reader Hazel Johnson wrote. “It’s a delicious holiday cake.”

Cranberry Cake

2 tablespoon butter

½ cup sugar*

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups sifted flour

2 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

2 cups whole, raw cranberries

*Note: The original recipe calls for one cup of sugar in the cake recipe, but Hazel makes it with ½ cup of sugar and said it turns out fine.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cream butter and sugar well, then blend in the vanilla. Sift the flour, salt and baking powder in a separate bowl. Add dry ingredients to the cream mixture alternately with the milk. Fold in the cranberries.

Bake in a greased 8- or 9-inch square pan for about 35 minutes.

Serve warm with hot butter sauce.

Hot Butter Sauce

½ cup butter

1 cup sugar

½ cup cream

Melt the butter. Blend in the sugar. Stir in the cream. Simmer for five minutes.