Sugared Cranberries

Sugared Cranberries are a statement dish for your holiday menu. Serve them with a cheese board or as a cocktail garnish! Your friends will ohh and ahh over this easy recipe. 

This post may contain affiliate links. I may earn a small commission from your purchase. Thank you for supporting Feast + West!

Thanksgiving! It’s tomorrow! Are you so excited?

I sure am. It’s one of my favorite holidays. Arguably my favorite holiday, actually.

It’s just so nice to be around the table with family and friends enjoying food together.

I had one more recipe I wanted to share before tomorrow, so I am squeezing it in today.

Meet sugared cranberries.

They’re a perfect last-minute recipe you can bring to your Thanksgiving or Christmas party as a snack, put out with a cheese board or use to garnish cocktails.

Sugared cranberries would look perfect as a garnish for my Yule Mule Cocktail or my Poinsettia Champagne Cocktail. 

The recipe for sugared cranberries is so simple. Sugared cranberries are coated in simple syrup, then dusted in granulated sugar.

You only need two ingredients, the ones in the name: sugar and cranberries. (Well, three, if you count the water used in the simple syrup!)

I just love how they glisten in the bowl.

I made sugared cranberries a few weeks ago when I attended the Saveur Blog Awards in Cincinnati.*

One of our afternoon activities was putting together a cheese board for a food styling workshop, so I picked up sugar and cranberries and got to work.

My pals Lauren and Mackenzie from The World in a Pocket shared an Airbnb with me, and they helped me make sugared cranberries.

Together we navigated our way through a VERY sparse kitchen. I actually made my sugared cranberries in a colander! So if we can do that, you can make these at your house.

How to make sugared cranberries

You’ll need a small saucepan, if you need to make your own simple syrup. You can use store-bought or even use some you have on hand.

Then you’re going to stir the cranberries into the syrup to coat them, and then you’ll drain off the syrup with a fine-mesh strainer.

Keep it for cocktails if you like! And if you do, you’ll need a glass food storage container or mason jar.

Then you’ll lay your cranberries out to dry. I use a wire baking rack but you can lay wax paper down on a cookie sheet. Just be warned they will be sticky! Let them sit for about an hour. 

Once they’re dry, toss them into a bowl, and dust them with sugar. 

I used granulated sugar for these because it’s what I had on hand, but you can also use organic cane sugar. The grain of the sugar is going to give them that snowy, sugary look. 

And then they are ready to eat! Someone told me they taste like natural Sour Patch Kids. I thought it was so funny, but so true! 

Hope you love these as much as I do! 

Happy baking, and happy Thanksgiving to you! // susannah

*I mentioned the Saveur Blog Awards above. My blog was a finalist in the Best Entertaining Blog category, and although it did not win, I am so humbled to have had this experience. I got to visit lovely Cincinnati with some of the other finalists, and I had the best time. Thank you so much for nominating Feast + West and for voting for me! It means the world.