A Delicious Cranberry Cake Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Can I use fresh cranberries instead of frozen? ›

Yes! Fresh cranberries freeze for up to a year and can often be substituted in recipes that call for fresh cranberries. When cooking with frozen cranberries, do not thaw before using.

If you'd prefer, you could use simple syrup, coconut sugar, cane sugar, sugar-free sweetener, maple syrup, or raw honey. You could also omit the added sugar and make an unsweetened cranberry juice if you'd prefer. Fresh Citrus: oranges and lemons add sweet and acid to balance the cranberries tartness.

Fresh cranberry juice is often blended with other delicious fruits, and the leftover pulp is just as wonderful. Put that pulp to use with this festive Cranberry Chutney! Delicious spread on crostini with brie cheese or served alongside turkey, pork or chicken.

Collectively, Americans consume five million gallons of cranberry sauce during the holidays each year. This side dish has become essential to Thanksgiving menus, whether you opt to buy it (as 76% of Americans do) or make it yourself.

If your cranberries are on the larger size, we'd cut them in half or quarters before baking. Toss them with a little flour so they won't sink in the batter, too!

Sort berries and remove stems; then wash and drain thoroughly. Blot dry with a clean towel to remove as much moisture as possible. Water remaining on the skin of the cranberry will cause the berry to blister when frozen and the berries to stick together.

One of the best foils for bitter flavors are acidic ingredients, like citrus juices or vinegars.

Some syrups that would be great include orange, pineapple, coconut and strawberry. These syrups will give you more flavors while also sweetening it up to make it a bit more drinkable. This is probably one of the most common ways to make cranberry juice taste better.

Cranberries may reduce insulin resistance

Eating them with a meal, even if they're sweetened as in cranberry sauce, causes a smaller increase in blood sugar levels than eating the same meal without cranberries.

Aspirin: Like aspirin, cranberries contain salicylic acid. If you take aspirin regularly, as a blood-thinner, for example, or if you are allergic to aspirin, you should not take cranberry supplements or drink a lot of juice. Other medications: Cranberry may interact with medications that are broken down by the liver.

Why do I feel better after drinking cranberry juice? ›

Cranberry juice is rich in vitamin C, which helps keep your immune system healthy and functioning properly. It fights against oxidative stress from free radicals and helps kill harmful bacteria. Some studies also link low vitamin C intake to poor immune function.

You can also take a small taste of the juice to be certain before using it in a drink. However, you should look for any potential fermentation or mold before you do. If you do see anything floating in your juice, or any film sticking to the bottle, your best bet is to err on the side of caution and discard it.

When it comes to dessert at the first Thanksgiving celebration, there's no documented evidence of what the pilgrims and Native Americans may have had (if anything). But it's pretty clear they did not have pumpkin pie or any pie for that matter. The colonists lacked wheat flour and butter necessary for making pie crust.

Much like red and green symbolize Christmas, Thanksgiving has its own set of special hues. While, technically, just about any color can be incorporated into a Thanksgiving table setting or holiday theme, the Thanksgiving color scheme most people associate with Turkey Day is orange, brown, red and yellow.

There are only two surviving documents that reference the original Thanksgiving harvest meal. They describe a feast of freshly killed deer, assorted wildfowl, a bounty of cod and bass, and flint, a native variety of corn harvested by the Native Americans, which was eaten as corn bread and porridge.

Using Dried Cranberries in Place of Fresh

You can use dried cranberries in recipes that call for fresh cranberries, but there is a difference in measurement. If a recipe calls for 1 cup fresh cranberries, use ¾ cup of sweetened dried cranberries instead.

If cooking your berries into a pie filling, you may need to add additional thickening agents because frozen berries tend to release more liquid than fresh and will lead to a runnier consistency. For best results in your baking, don't defrost the berries before use but instead toss them in flour.

"Cranberries are safe to eat raw. However, usually they are cooked and have sugar added because of the bitter and sharp taste they have when raw," says Kelly West Keyser, a registered dietitian in Alabama.

Cranberries are generally considered safe whether they are cooked or raw. However, because of their notoriously bitter, sharp taste, most people prefer not to eat them raw or unsweetened. This bitterness is due to the high tannin content of cranberries.