Things I’ve Learned about Cranberry Sauce

1) It lasts a long time in a fridge.

2) Nobody eats more than about a tablespoon at Thanksgiving–some eat less than that.

3) The canned stuff and the real stuff have amazingly little to do with one another.

4) There’s a lot you can do with leftover cranberry sauce–the real stuff.

The real stuff is the stuff you make by tossing in the bag of cranberries, some water and some sugar and letting the whole thing cook for about 10 minutes. The details are always on the back of the back. I reduce the amount of sugar, which makes for a runnier concoction, but I don’t like really sweet stuff.

The main purpose of cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving, I’m convinced, is to look really good in some sort clear, crystally container and to add a need splash of bright color to the Thanksgiving feast for photographic purposes.

But what do you do with the bulk of the cranberry sauce after everyone’s consumed or played with their requisite tablespoon?

Easiest? Cranberry Fool.

Take leftover whipped cream, layer with leftover cranberry sauce in goblet. Swirl to your artistic satisfaction. Add mint leaf and candied orange zest if you’re really trying to fake it. Eat.

Cranberry-Habanero Hot Sauce.

Rob actually does this from scratch–as in he grows the habaneros. I suggest for those who are less patient or browner thumbed that you simply whir the two together in a food processor or blender. Warning–expect everything made in processor or blender to be slightly spicey for a couple of weeks no matter how well you’ve washed the darn thing. Particularly if you’re using plastic.

Cranberry Upside-Down Cake

Now this is really my adaptation of the Nantucket Cranberry Pie the appears in Laurie Colwin’s More Home Cooking. Colwin was a good novelist, but a truly great food writer. Every time I read one of her two slim volumes of food writing–Home Cooking and More Home Cooking–compilations of articles that mostly appeared in Gourmet Magazine–I feel a sense of loss, the warm, cozy friend I know only through the printed page.

Anyway, Colwin’s recipe is easy, my adaptation is even easier.

Preheat oven to $350. Grease 9-inch springform cake tin. Cover bottom of pan with

Whole-berry cranberry sauce–i.e. the kind you make.

Mix in bowl:

2 eggs

3/4 C melted butter

1 C sugar

1 C all-purpose flour

1 1/2 t orange-flower water.

Mix ’til it looks like your usual yellowy smooth cake batter. (I just use a spoon.) Pour over cranberry sauce. Bake around 40 minutes, ’til top is golden brown and springs back lightly. (Yes, you can do the toothpick thing, too.)

Colwin’s version involves chopping raw cranberries and adding walnuts. She uses almond extract for flavoring. Since I put orange zest in my cranberry sauce–or at least I did this year, I find orange-flower water gives the cake an unexpected layer of flavor. But, of course, you can always use vanilla.