Description
A holiday appetizer featuring a block of cream cheese topped with homemade cranberry sauce and fresh green onions, served with crackers and apple slices on an elegant serving board.
Ingredients
For the Cranberry Sauce:
- 6 oz fresh cranberries
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- ½ cup water
- 1 jalapeño, finely diced (skip if you hate spice)
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
For Assembly:
- 8 oz cream cheese (leave it out for 30 minutes first)
- 3 green onions, sliced
For Serving:
- Whatever crackers you have
- Fresh apple slices
Instructions
Rinse those cranberries and dump them in a small pot with sugar, water, and salt. Dice up your jalapeño if you’re using it – keep the seeds for heat, toss them for mild. Everything goes in the pot together.
Don’t worry about perfect dicing on the jalapeño. Rough chops work fine since it all cooks down anyway. If you’re scared of spice, start with half a pepper and taste as you go. You can always add more heat, but you can’t take it away.
Fresh cranberries sometimes have little stems or bad spots – just pick those out as you rinse. Frozen cranberries work just as well and sometimes they’re actually better because they’ve been flash-frozen at peak ripeness.
Crank the heat to medium-high and let it bubble up. Stir once, then drop it to medium-low and leave the lid off. Five minutes later you’ll hear cranberries popping – that’s when you know it’s getting thick and ready.
The popping sound is your timer – once you hear it consistently, start checking every minute. Some cranberries are more stubborn than others. You want most of them burst but a few whole ones left for texture.
Don’t be tempted to mash them with your spoon. Let them do their thing naturally. Mashed cranberries make the sauce too uniform and boring. The chunky bits are what make this interesting.
Take it off the heat and stick the whole pot in the fridge. Don’t skip this part or you’ll melt your cream cheese into soup.
I usually make the sauce first thing when I get home from work, then assemble everything right before people come over. It needs at least fifteen minutes to cool properly, but an hour is even better.
If you’re in a hurry, set the pot in a bowl of ice water and stir occasionally. It’ll cool in about five minutes this way.
Plop that cream cheese block on your serving plate. Take a spoon and press a little dent down the middle – gives the sauce somewhere to sit pretty.
The indentation doesn’t have to be perfect – you’re not carving sculptures here. Just enough to keep the sauce from sliding off the sides. If your cream cheese is really soft, you might not need to do this at all.
Some people slice the cream cheese in half and layer it, but I think that’s showing off unnecessarily. One block looks more elegant and it’s easier to serve.
Pour your cooled sauce right over the cream cheese. Sprinkle those green onions on top for color.
Start pouring from the center and let it flow naturally to the edges. Don’t worry if it’s not perfectly even – rustic looks better anyway. Save a few green onions for garnish around the plate if you’re feeling fancy.
Set out crackers and apple slices around the edges. Stand back and watch people fight over the last bite.
I put little spoons or knives next to the dip so people can serve themselves properly. Nothing worse than someone digging into your beautiful creation with a broken tortilla chip.
Notes
Pull your cream cheese out early so it’s not rock hard when you need it. Some cranberries should stay whole when you cook them – don’t turn everything to mush. Taste it while it cooks because some cranberries are way more sour than others.
That pinch of salt sounds wrong but it makes everything taste better. Cook the sauce thicker than you want because it loosens up later.
Buy cream cheese in blocks, not tubs. The whipped stuff in containers has air beaten into it and doesn’t hold its shape as well. You want that solid block that looks impressive on the plate.
Green onions go bad fast, so buy them the day you’re making this if possible. Wilted green onions look sad on top of your beautiful dip. If they’re starting to get slimy, just use the white and light green parts.
Never use a blender or food processor on this sauce. You’ll lose all the chunky texture that makes it interesting. Stick with the wooden spoon and let the cranberries break down naturally.
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 8 minutes
- Category: Appetizer
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: American