Save This Recipe
We'll email this post to you, so you can come back to it later!
This 3-ingredient Slow Cooker cobbler turns a can of jellied cranberry sauce into a warm, bubbly dessert with almost zero effort. It reminds me of the dump cakes from old Midwestern cookbooks — minimal prep, big payoff. Throw it together before brunch and let the Slow Cooker do all the work.
Why You’ll Love It
Only 3 ingredients — jellied cranberry sauce, yellow cake mix, and butter. That’s it.
Hands-off cooking — the Slow Cooker does everything while you enjoy your day
Tangy, buttery, and crowd-pleasing — the cranberry melts into a ruby syrup that soaks up into the cake with a crisp, golden top
No mixing, no fuss — just layer, drizzle, and walk away
Easy to customize — a few simple swaps and it works in every season
About the Ingredients
The cranberry sauce: it needs to be the jellied kind, the can-shaped cylinder, not the whole berry kind. I know that feels counterintuitive. But the jellied sauce melts completely and evenly, and it becomes this gorgeous, tangy syrup that soaks into everything. The whole berry version doesn’t behave the same way — I tried it once, thinking it might be even better, and it was fine but kind of chunky in a way that didn’t quite work. Stick with the cylinder.
Yellow cake mix. I usually grab whatever’s on sale. I’ve used Betty Crocker, I’ve used Duncan Hines, honestly I don’t notice a difference between them in this application. You’re using it dry, so there’s no egg, no oil, none of the usual additions.
Butter. I always have unsalted on hand, which is what I use, but salted will work too — just don’t add any extra salt to anything.
Ingredients
1 (14–16 oz) can jellied cranberry sauce — slide the whole cylinder out, don’t cut it up first
1 (15.25 oz) box yellow cake mix, dry only — don’t open it thinking you need to mix anything, you don’t
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted — I usually melt mine in the microwave in a glass measuring cup, about 45 seconds or so
How to Make It
Grease the inside of your Slow Cooker. I use butter, just rubbing a cold stick around the sides and bottom, but nonstick spray works too. My slow cooker is about five quarts, maybe five and a half — I’ve had it for years and I’ve never once looked at the actual size printed on it, so I’m estimating.
Open the can of cranberry sauce from both ends and slide the whole cylinder out into the bottom of the slow cooker. This is the part that feels ridiculous, watching that gelatinous log of cranberry sauce plop into your ceramic insert. It’s fine. It looks wrong and it will be right.
Sprinkle the dry cake mix over the top, right over and around the cranberry cylinder. Try to spread it as evenly as you can, though “even” is relative here and perfection is not the goal. Don’t stir anything. The layering matters — the cranberry needs to be able to bubble up through the cake as it cooks, so you want distinct layers, not a mixed-together mess.
Drizzle the melted butter over the top. Go slowly. Try to hit as much of the dry surface as you can. A few dry spots are fine — they’ll catch the steam from the cranberry heating up below. I use a spoon sometimes to kind of push the butter around if it’s pooling in one area.
Put the lid on. Cook on HIGH for two to two and a half hours, or on LOW for four to four and a half hours. I always do HIGH because I am impatient. You’re looking for a top that looks set and mostly dry, edges that have gone lightly golden, and cranberry bubbling up around the sides. Don’t lift the lid too much — every time you do, you lose heat and add time to the cook.
When it’s done, turn it off and leave the lid on for another ten or fifteen minutes. This is the step I used to skip, thinking it was unnecessary, and the one time I skipped it the cobbler was a little soupy in a way that wasn’t quite as satisfying. Let it rest.
Then just spoon it into Bowls. Each serving should get some of that glossy cranberry base and some of the buttery cake top. Vanilla ice cream alongside it is, in my opinion, the correct choice — something about the cold cream against the warm tart cranberry is just exactly right.
Variations
Orange zest added right on top of the cranberry log before the cake mix goes on is a lovely touch — a little brighter. If you want it less sweet, white cake mix is a reasonable swap. The cranberry tartness comes through more clearly, which some people prefer. A spiced version is wonderful in the fall — whisking cinnamon and a bit of nutmeg into the dry cake mix before sprinkling it over the cranberry tastes like something that should be served next to a fire.
Chopped pecans scattered over the top before the butter — genuinely good. Adds texture.
Leftovers
Get them into the refrigerator within a couple of hours. I put mine in a shallow container — the shallower the better, just so it cools down faster. It keeps three or four days without issue. I’ve eaten it cold out of the fridge the next morning with a spoonful of plain yogurt stirred in, pretending this was somehow a responsible breakfast, and it was honestly one of my better decisions of that entire week.
Reheat it until it’s steaming hot before eating again, not just warm.