This is a preview of today’s paid post. If you’d like to grab the recipe for the best cheese wafer with cranberries and pecans as well as a cranberry-oatmeal cookie called the Cranzac (plus access more than 300 tested recipes in my archive), become a paid subscriber and support my work for all to read. Have a Very Merry Cranberry Christmas - No. 370David Lebovitz’s Cranzacs + a cheese ball with cranberry chutney + Martha Stewart cranberry punch + Nashville cranberry tart + cranberry ice cubes + cranberry cheese wafers
LAST WEEK IT WAS PERFECT TIMING when two dozen Cranzac cookies were cooling on my kitchen counter. Cranzacs are the cranberry version of the national cookie of Australia and New Zealand—the Anzac. And they’re the brainchild of Paris cookbook author David Lebovitz with whom I talked cookies earlier this week. A longtime subscriber here at Between the Layers invited me to visit her Vanderbilt University class potluck. ”What can I bring?” I muttered to myself at the last minute. And while I was a bit embarrassed to bring cookies I had never tested before, surely they would be better than no cookies at all. David’s Cranzacs were a hit!
Anything cranberry in December is a win. I knew when I spied that recipe in David’s book, I’d be making them. Everything I needed was already in my pantry. The class was about food and social justice, and while I would absolutely call Southern pound cake a social justice food, I’m thinking Cranzacs are more a recipe of remembrance. David says in his recipe headnote they are a riff on the Anzac biscuits that were created as sustenance for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (thus, ANZAC). There is an Anzac Day on which to bake the cookies—April 25–but you don’t have to wait that long. The fact that these cookies are egg-free is not only helpful if baking for people with food allergies, but it begs a deeper story. Cookies in wartime were often made without eggs or wheat flour. In lean times, you would have saved those eggs for feeding the family. Wheat flour might have been available only to feed the troops, and so oatmeal became a wartime substitute in breads, cakes, and cookies. And with the addition of dried, sweetened cranberries in David’s version of the cookie, they hardly taste of sacrifice.
Cranberries brighten the flavor of foods, our mood, too, and they somehow make food taste healthier. They add color, that natural pop of red, and vitamin C. And who doesn’t need more vitamin C in December, right? I always make a cheese ball with Mary Ferguson’s Cranberry Chutney during the holidays, and my husband’s godmother’s recipe for cranberry chutney is the best to pour over it. (Truth be told, that cheese ball recipe came via Vivian Howard and David Lebovitz). Now I add not only apples to Mary’s chutney but some pears, too. That chutney is so good smeared on a grilled cheese sandwich. Or gifted in little jars!
Then, there’s Martha Stewart’s punch recipe, which I have shared before. I love the versatility of it, and it’s a fresher and more colorful alternative to eggnog. You be the judge if you need the vodka. (Might depend on the crowd.) But it’s nice to have a festive no-alcohol punch. And that Nashville Cranberry Tart recipe. It’s made the rounds in my hometown. I shared the recipe back in 2017 in my book, What Can I Bring and then shared it a year ago here at Between the Layers. It must have originated in some spiral-bound school cookbook somewhere, which is where most great recipes start. I’ve made it with blueberries and lemon, but it’s absolutely the best with cranberries.
As for the cranberry ice cubes… I have bought extra fresh cranberries for the freezer ever since we had that cranberry shortage some years back. I can’t imagine a Christmas without cranberries, and why end the party there, so I’ve got cranberries for January and February, too. To make the cubes, plop a half dozen washed fresh cranberries into ice cube trays with a little sprig of fresh rosemary. Add some cranberry juice and a splash of blood orange seltzer. Freeze. If you don’t have ice cube trays, use a mini muffin tin. Place a cube or two into glasses and pour over Prosecco or sparkling water.
Lastly, the cranberry cheese wafers were very last-minute. As I was talking through the ice cubes with my sister Susan last night, she said surely I was going to share the cranberry cheese wafer recipe with the chopped pecans. I said, send it to me and maybe I will…... Continue reading this post for free in the Substack app
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