Sweet, Candied Cranberries
A simple, sweet, and tart treat, these sugared cranberries are perfect for the holidays. While they can absolutely be enjoyed as a standalone snack (Luke loves eating them by themselves), I typically use these as edible decoration for other holiday treats, like my gingerbread, gingerbread cake or cupcakes or Swiss roll. They’d also be gorgeous on gingerbread houses! While they look fancy, the actual active work required to make these is super minimal. All you have to do is make a simple syrup, add the berries, dry them for an hour, then toss them in sugar. That’s it! Easy, right? Add these to your holiday desserts for a fun festive touch! They instantly elevate the look and add a frosted, wintery feeling wherever you use them.
What You Need
You only need three basic ingredients to make these candied cranberries:
Cranberries. Grab a bag of fresh cranberries from the store and give it a thorough wash and dry before using them. You’ll also want to sort through your bag to find any cranberries that are old/wrinkly or damaged, as these won’t look or taste great (no matter how much sugar we add to them!).Water. Equal parts water and sugar make our simple syrup. We’ll give our cranberries a swim in this syrup to make them sticky enough for the remaining sugar to adhere.Sugar. Plain old granulated sugar is all you need here. We’ll be using some to make the syrup, and then more for rolling our candied cranberries through after they’ve been coated in syrup (this is what gives them that sparkly, snow-covered effect!).
SAM’S TIP: Some people like to add orange zest or vanilla extract to their candied cranberries. If you plan to add orange zest, you can add it to your final sugar mixture (for rolling). Vanilla can be added to the syrup (mix it in just before adding the cranberries). This is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Sugared Cranberries
SAM’S TIP: While you can enjoy your candied cranberries right away, I recommend drying for that final hour to let the coating fully set up and avoid sticky/tacky berries. How do you use your sugared cranberries? Let me know in the comments! Enjoy! Let’s bake together! I’ll be walking you through all the steps in my written recipe and video below! If you try this recipe, be sure to tag me on Instagram, and you can also find me on YouTube and Facebook
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