28 Sweet-Tart Cranberry Recipes

This Pavlova has a secret: The whipped cream on top of the crisp meringue shell tastes a lot like a Creamsicle.

Instead of making a traditional two-crust pie in a pie plate, Food & Wine’s Justin Chapple makes this free-form, fruit-filled, ginger-laced pie on a baking sheet.

A classic take on cranberry jelly is updated with tart sliced apples.

This jammy, mustard-seed-spiked condiment from chef and butcher Chris Eley is terrific served alongside everything from grilled sausage to roast turkey.

This is a terrific cross between a tart and a cake; it has a crisp, delicate crust as well as a cakey filling made with nutty browned butter and vanilla bean. Pastry chef Katherine Thompson serves it all year-round with different toppings, but for the holidays, she loves to pile on fresh cranberries.

Sweet-tart dried cranberries add color and texture to a basic salad dressing.

This super-simple crust is made with store-bought gingersnaps and ground walnuts and filled with silky pumpkin filling and a cranberry compote topping with more crunchy walnuts.

Cranberries only need to be cooked for a few minutes before they burst and form a sauce.

Every year for his birthday, Tim Hollingsworth's mother makes him cheesecake with canned cherries on top. In his clever version, he substitutes goat cheese for the cream cheese and glazed cranberries for the cherries.

Adding cranberries and rolled oats to buttery chocolate chip cookie dough makes the cookies crunchier and more substantial.

In this version, chef Marcus Samuelsson muddles cranberries along with the usual lime and replaces the Brazilian spirit cachaça (made from sugarcane juice) with Scandinavian aquavit (an infused spirit).

Because brussels sprouts are slightly bitter, Michel Nischan likes to pair them with something sweet: dried cranberries that have been plumped in off-dry Riesling. "I don't like to overdress vegetables," he explains. "It takes just one counterpoint to bring the sprouts to a place where people say, 'This is really good.'"

This chunky cranberry chutney is super-fresh-tasting because the cranberries are simmered briefly and the orange sections are added near the end of cooking.

With crunchy nuts, sweet-tart cranberries and sautéed shallots, these make fantastic bread for turkey sandwiches.

This strong but not overly sweet sangria is nicely spiced with cinnamon, anise and cloves and it has just enough crushed red pepper to give it a tiny kick.

Gary Vaynerchuk prefers "real cranberry sauce" with chunks of whole fruit over the smooth canned-and-jellied kind.

Mani Niall's pleasantly dense cranberry-studded scones, for instance, get a toffeelike flavor from light brown turbinado sugar, which has large, crunchy crystals. Sugar in the Raw is a good brand.

Traditional cranberry sauce gets a sweet, dark glug of port wine.

Chef Peter Ireland serves this delicately spiced, sweet-tart fruit compote with seared foie gras. Here he pairs it with incredibly tender corn cakes.

Cooked with less water and in a wide skillet, tart cranberries get candied in the sugar syrup and remain almost whole.

"It's so easy to make your own cranberry sauce, why wouldn't you?" Barbara Lynch says of this bitter-tart conserve, which she also jars and gives as a gift. She suggests adjusting the recipe to taste by varying the amount of cranberries, grapefruit and sugar.

These gingery, nutrient-packed bars use only natural sweeteners like brown rice syrup and natural cane sugar. "Brown rice syrup has a nice, round flavor that doesn't give you the jolt of sweetness that processed sugars do," Heidi Swanson says. The recipe itself is very versatile: "Once you get the hang of the technique, you can swap in all kinds of other nuts, spices and dried fruit."

This elegant, low-fat panna cotta requires only five ingredients: cranberries, sugar, gelatin, water and buttermilk (instead of the usual cream).

Chewy cranberries meet crunchy almonds in this classic biscotti pairing.

The bark, roots and other more esoteric ingredients used to make bitters can be found at specialty grocery stores.

This sweet-and-tangy compote pairs perfectly with fresh goat cheese.

In this clever and tasty riff on traditional cranberry sauce, Food & Wine’s Laura Rege tosses cranberries with juicy red grapes before roasting in the oven.