Skip to footer

Cranberry recipes

Versatile and full of nutrients, cranberries are delicious in baked goods, as a tart relish for holiday spreads, and even mixed into smoothies. Here's how to bring a pop of red into your seasonal dishes.

8. Cranberry apricot bars

A Palatable Pastime
Gooey apricot caramel brownies with almonds, cranberries and coconut.

By Sue Lau, A Palatable Pastime

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour (8-1/2 ounces)

For the topping:

1/4 cup old-fashioned oats, toasted
1/4 cup sliced almonds, toasted
1/4 cup sweetened flaked coconut
1/4 cup dried cranberries (craisins)
1/4 cup dried apricots, chopped
1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons honey
1/3 cup Simply Fruit Apricot Spread or Apricot Jam
3 tablespoons sweetened flaked coconut

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Butter the inside of a glass 8- by 8-inch square baking pan.

3. Cream together the butter and sugar (thoroughly mix until sugar dissolves).

4. Stir in the vanilla, salt, and flour and mix into a dough.

5. Press dough evenly into the bottom of the buttered baking pan, then chill in the refrigerator while you continue.

6. Mix the dry ingredients for the topping together in a small bowl.

7. In a small saucepan, melt the butter with sugar and honey over low heat.

8. Stir in the dry fruit topping mixture and bring to a boil; boil for 2 minutes then remove from heat.

9. Take out the baking pan, and spread the top of the dough with the apricot spread.

10. Top the spread with the cooked fruit mixture.

11. Sprinkle the topping with an extra 3 tablespoons of sweetened flaked coconut.

12. Bake for 20 minutes.

13. Allow to cool completely before slicing into squares.

Read the full post on Stir It Up!

8 of 14
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.