Cranberry Lemon Tea Cake

My mom has a lemon tree in her backyard that produces amazing, delicious lemons.  She doesn’t use lemons, though, so she always gives them to me.  I know- lucky me, right?  Sometimes I squeeze them to make lemonade, as I did at Thanksgiving (when I hand juiced 15 lemons), but a lot of the time, I save them for lemon-y food recipes.  When I found a recipe in Working Mother magazine for Raspberry Lemon Tea Cake, I cut it out, knowing there’d be some lemons coming my way I could use to make the cake (which is really more like a bread).  We had some fresh cranberries left over from Thanksgiving, so I decided to substitute those for the raspberries and make the recipe.  I just pulled the loaf out of the oven, and while I haven’t tried it yet, I can definitely say it looks and smells delicious!  We’ll get to sample it tomorrow morning when my parents, brother and his girlfriend, and cousin come over for Christmas breakfast.

Cranberry Lemon Tea Cake

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

Pinch of salt

3/4 cup low-fat Greek-style yogurt (I used sour cream instead)

2 large eggs

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup sugar

Zest of 1 lemon

1 cup cranberries (or raspberries, as the recipe originally states)

1/3 cup canola oil

1. Preheat oven to 350F.  Coat an 8 1/2 x 4 i/2-inch loaf pan with cooking spray.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk together yogurt, eggs, vanilla, sugar and zest.  Lightly whisk in the flour mixture until incorporated.  using a rubber spatula, fold in cranberries, then slowly pour in oil, foling it into the batter.  Transfer to the prepared baking pan.

4. Bake 50 to 55 minutes, until the cake is golden and starts to come away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

5. Cool 5 minutes, then run a knife along the edges of the pan to loosen the cake.  Flip the cake out of the pan to cool right side up.