Yum!
The other day I was reading a post on a cooking blog I recently discovered. On her site Ari had a recipe for Marble Molasses Pound Cake from a cookbook she had. It sounded divine! And of course, me being me, I had to experiment with it. Unfortunately, or should I say, fortunately, it didn’t quite work out as planned. To begin with, I had no eggs…

I ended up making a lot of changes to amounts and ingredients and in the end I had a pound cake that wasn’t bad, but it certainly wasn’t what I’d call a rousing success either. This is in no way any reflection on Ari, her site, her tastes or her chosen recipe. I bet the original recipe is outstanding. My severely altered version…not so much. It was edible, pleasant, even, but somewhat bland, so I decided to try once more to redeem this poor, bastardized pound cake before labeling it ‘dog treats’ and moving on. I made a deceptively easy cranberry compote to top it with and a mediocre result turned into a spectacular, not-too-sweet dessert with all the best parts of holiday cooking therein.

The egg substitute I used is an easy, cheap and effective method for baking without eggs. I found it at
Recipezaar and decided to give it a spin. It worked like a charm and trust me, you don’t miss the eggs one little bit.

Yum!

Before you do anything here, if you plan on using the egg substitute instead of eggs, go ahead and combine the flax meal and water in a microwave safe container and nuke it for about a minute. Keep an eye on it and don’t let it boil over. When it’s done put it aside to cool while you work on other things.

Egg substitute:

2 tbs flax meal
4-6 tbs water (I used 5)

Cake:

1c whole wheat flour
1c naturally white whole wheat flour
2 heaping tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2c oil-based, heart healthy margarine
1c brown sugar
2 eggs or egg substitute from above
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp almond extract
3 tbs molasses
1 heaping tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Compote:

8 oz can cranberry sauce
1/4c dried cranberries
1/4c orange juice (about one small orange)