"Are we planning anything that needs eggs?" TF asks me. "No," says I as I pack up all 12 of our remaining eggs to be given to TM.

I mean, to be fair, at the moment the question was asked, I wasn't planning anything that required eggs. But an hour or so later I suddenly desperately wanted to bake something. Not bread, we've already got lots and I'm way to tired today anyway. Something quick and easy. A cake or maybe some muffins! Oh right, those are things that generally require eggs. Drat! Cue an hour of aimlessly flipping through recipes muttering about eggs.

I wasn't in the mood for a pie or a crumble or shortbread, so that eliminated a lot of the non-bread egg-less options. I considered making scones or making muffins or quick bread with flax eggs in place of the chicken egg, but none of those quite tickled my fancy tonight. I had initially written off this cranberry pudding recipe since we didn't have any frozen cranberries left... or so I thought! After some contemplation I decided that maybe it was worth double-checking the cranberry situation. Turns out we still had most of a bag in the freezer! Score!

This recipe apparently hails from Maine and is pudding in the British sense of being a sweet dessert-type dish rather than pudding in the North American sense of being a custard-y milk-based concoction. Looking at the recipe, it looks an awful lot like sticky toffee pudding but with cranberries taking the place of the dates. I still think I prefer traditional sticky toffee pudding, but this is an interesting variation on the theme.

Cranberry Pudding

From Taste of Home

Ingredients

Cake

• 1/4 c. unsalted butter, softened
• 1/4-1/2 c. sugar¹
• 1 c. all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/8 tsp. coarse sea salt, ground
• 1/2 c. whole (3.25%) milk
• 1 1/2 c. frozen cranberries, halved

Sauce

• 1/2-1 c. brown sugar¹
• 1 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
• 1/16 tsp. coarse sea salt, ground
• 2/3 c. water
• 1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions

Cake

1. Grease and flour a 20cm (8") square cake tin and preheat oven to 180°C (350°F).
2. Cream sugar with butter.
3. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt.
4. Mix flour mixture into creamed mixture alternately with milk.
5. Stir in cranberries.
6. Spread mixture evenly into prepared tin.
7. Bake at 180°C (350°F) for 40 minutes.

Sauce

1. Combine sugar, flour, and salt.
2. Stir in water until smooth.
3. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
4. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally for 3 minutes.
5. Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla.
6. Pour sauce over warm cake.

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The original recipe is written for the larger amount of sugar, which is what I used this time. However, I found the results overly sweet. If I'm going to have cranberry pudding, I'd like for the cranberries to be able to really shine. I'll probably try scaling back the sugar in either the cake, the sauce, or both next time. ^Back