The recipe
Three Ingredients for a Holiday Applesauce
This holiday applesauce turns three ingredients into something much more distinctive than everyday applesauce: cooking apples, cranberry juice cocktail, and red hot cinnamon candies.
The source calls it an easy recipe with excellent taste and specifically recommends it for the holidays, making the bright color and cinnamon flavor part of its seasonal appeal.
Why it matters
Why This One Is Worth Bringing Back
Holiday Cranberry Applesauce is worth bringing back because it captures a very particular kind of community-cookbook ingenuity: take a familiar side dish and give it a holiday personality with ingredients already recognizable to home cooks.
The cranberry juice deepens the fruit flavor while red hot cinnamon candies bring both spice and color. The contributor’s own note calls the recipe ‘easy’ and says it is especially good for the holidays, which is exactly how the archive presents it.
There is no need to add a modern flavor story to this one—the unusual ingredient combination is already the story. For another holiday-table recipe from the archive, see Turkey Dressing for Crowd.
Modern kitchen notes
If You're Making It Today
These are modern editorial suggestions, not changes to the archived recipe. When a variation comes directly from the original source, we will say so.
Do not peel the apples
The source specifically says to core and slice the cooking apples without peeling them.
Use the cinnamon candies as written
Red hot cinnamon candies are not merely a garnish here; they dissolve into the applesauce and provide both flavor and color.
Cook until the apples are very soft
The source gives an initial covered cook followed by a lower simmer until the apples are very soft before processing.
Serve it at any temperature
The recipe explicitly allows warm, chilled, or room-temperature serving, which makes it flexible for a holiday table.
Recipe card
The Preserved Recipe
Holiday Cranberry Applesauce
Ingredients
- 3 lb. cooking apples such as McIntosh or Rome cored and sliced; do not peel
- 1½ c. cranberry juice cocktail
- ⅔ c. red hot cinnamon candies available in cake decoration aisle
Instructions
- In a large pot, combine all ingredients.
- Bring to a boil.
- Cook over medium heat, covered, 15 minutes.
- Lower heat; simmer until apples are very soft, about 20 minutes.
- Cool slightly.
- Transfer to a food processor with the knife blade; process until smooth.
- Serve warm, chilled, or at room temperature.
Notes
Give Something Back
Help preserve the community behind the cookbook.
This recipe traces back to a Jersey County community cookbook created in the spirit of sharing, service and local connection. If you’d like to carry that spirit forward, consider supporting the Jersey County Historical Society and its work preserving local history for future generations.
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Nostalgic Foodie is not affiliated with the Jersey County Historical Society and does not receive any portion of donations.
From the archive
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