Jeweled Cranberries

I got the recipe for jeweled cranberries from a co-worker and he even brought little samples of them for me to try and I decided to make jeweled cranberries instead of my cranberries chutney for the Thanksgiving Dinner.

I modified the recipe just a little bit to suit our taste buds, decreased the amount of sugar, omitted cinnamon and chose to not add water but increased the quantity of orange juice.  So the recipe below reflects what I used exactly. 

While exchanging recipes with friends, I realized that original recipe is very popular and the cooking can be done in microwave as well, but since I haven’t experimented with it, I’ll not offer any variations for that.

I made two batches of it, first one exactly followed the recipe, in the second one I skipped the orange juice but didn't add any extra water and it was still moist and juicy. 

As soon as they were out of the oven I poured them into mason jars and allowed it to cool and gel in the containers I was planning to serve it in. I labeled the jars promptly and to the jar which held non-orange juice cranberries, I added 2 tablespoon of Brandy while it was still warm. Now you know why labeling was so important, because one jar was meant for kids and I didn't want cross contamination.    

Both jars were well received at the dinner, of course the one with brandy went down faster. I think this recipe will replace the cranberry chutney for a little bit because it is a dish that we continued to enjoy with breakfast and at dessert too. I stored them in fridge and they last well over 6 weeks. By then we finished them, not that they were getting spoiled or anything.

It was consumed and devoured atop homemade clotted cream on whole wheat crisp rolls for breakfast with coffee.

More on the dessert coming soon…

Since I have a lot of things that need to be shared, I am trying to come up with a plan to share in an organized manner.  I’ll try to share my kitchen experiments on Wednesdays, if things get busier and then we’ll reevaluate but for now I’ll plan on it; and if you are reader that enjoys my kitchen posts then you’ll know Wednesday/ Thursday (based on your time zone) is when a new culinary experience will pop up on this blog (fingers crossed).