Adventures in Cooking: Shaped Vegan Cranberry Sauce
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. It has the spirit of togetherness, delicious food, and a charming parade, all without the pressure of presents and decorating (which I love, but still adds to my to-do list!)
These last few years we’ve brought a few items to the family potluck table, and one item I’ve been in charge of is cranberry sauce.
See Last Year's Christmas Food Post for a different, tart, orange-juice based version of cranberry sauce!
My personal favorite has always been the jellied, canned variety of cranberry sauce. So since I do enjoy making the sauce from scratch too, this year I am going with a new recipe, in a style to match the store-bought type: a molded sauce, a la 1950’s gelatin surprises.
My little mould!
Some of you with memories of those days may be groaning. But I promise, there will be no meat or vegetables hiding in this dish. Just cranberry with a little apple.
Our family has some dietary restrictions which means no gelatin, so I found a recipe which uses a chopped apple to help the sauce “gel” together. I was skeptical, but hopeful.
The recipe came from Some Tyme Place: https://sometymeplace.com/molded-cranberry-sauce-recipe/ , and they did a nice job explaining why the apple works.
I’ll put the ingredients here but direct you to the Williams Sonoma website for the instructions of how to release the sauce from the mould- they do such a good job of detailing how to do it that it’s worth checking out!
Ingredients:
1 apple
12 oz. fresh or frozen cranberries (cranberries can be stored in the fridge for a few weeks in the original bag, or frozen!)
1 cup of water
1 1/4 cup of sugar (this was a nice amount, the sauce was still a little tart and not over-sugared)
Directions:
Pre-mixed apple. I mixed it to an applesauce-like consistency.
Peel and core apple, and slice. Chop apple to smooth in food processor or Magic Bullet.
Add mixed apple, whole cranberries, water, and sugar in a medium pot and bring to a boil on medium. Some cranberries will make a popping noise and burst, this is normal.
Once it comes to a boil, turn down the heat and gently simmer on low to medium-low. Simmer here for 25 minutes until sauce thickens. Not all the cranberries will burst, and that’s ok.
Let sauce cool slightly.
Transfer sauce to decorative mould and let cool on counter for one hour or until mould is cool enough to put into fridge, no more than 2 hours (for food safety).
Refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight.
When ready to serve: Put mould into a warm water bath up to almost the rim of the mould for 30 seconds to one minute. Then remove from water and use a butter knife to loosen the sauce from the mould sides. Put a platter on top of the mould and flip both over to release the sauce. If it doesn’t release, try the water bath again. Serve immediately. See https://www.williams-sonoma.com/m/recipe/molded-cranberry-sauce10.html for more directions, and for a molded gelatin-based sauce recipe.
I did 2 practice runs this week to see if it would turn out nicely. Greasing options for the tin were limited due to dietary restrictions, so I trusted to the non-stick power of the Nordicware mould for the first try. Errors were made, but c’est la vie.
For this photo I used olive oil to grease the pan first and that made a world of difference. I garnished the middle with some fresh cranberries and orange slices.
It does melt quickly, so keep it in the mould and refrigerated as long as possible, and make sure your platter is large enough/has a lip to catch escaping liquid! Next time I might experiment with different types of apple, or some Agar Agar as another way to avoid meat-based gelatin, and see if that melts less.
Enjoy your Thanksgiving, if you celebrate! The holidays are definitely here, and after next week it’s time to think about the big one…. Christmas!
