Cranberries and Dumplings

Cranberries and Dumplings

Sometimes the best laid plans…

We were supposed to be at a party tonight. It was a combined cookie and dumpling party. I’m sure the food and the company were amazing. But it’s been a long week and a long weekend and we had exactly enough supplies to make this dish for 4 people. And the party was a good 20 people. Plus, we were exhausted. So we sent our regrets and stayed home. Since I needed to use up the cranberries that we had leftover from Thanksgiving anyway, I figured we’d have our own little dumpling night at home.

Ok, a little side vent here. I got this recipe from the Food Network. Specifically, it came from Emeril. Now this is a professional celebrity chef with a big following and probably a huge budget for his show and for his cookbooks. Food Network is (from all appearances) a very successful network with plenty of money and resources. So, why the heck are there no photos of this recipe???? Well, as you can see, I’ve got plenty of photos of this recipe. Hey, Food Network? Cook Local is two people operating out of their home kitchen. And still we manage to throw a photo of just about every single recipe up on our site. Help a cook out, will ya?

One last vent. This recipe was actually called Cranberry Dumplings. Really, it’s much more cranberries and dumplings.

Cranberries and Dumplings, adapted from Food Network

Golden brown crust

• 1 Tbsp flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 cups cranberries
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup water

• 1/4 cup flour
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 egg

1. Preheat oven to 375.
2. In a saucepan, mix the flour, sugar, cranberries, vanilla, and water.
3. Bring to a boil and then turn the heat down to low and just keep the cranberries warm. The mixture will be very liquidy and that’s just fine.
4. Next, in a medium bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, salt, and sugar together.
5. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the egg and milk.
6. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and use a spoon to stir well. No beating necessary.
7. Grease an 8×8 pan or a large cake pan.
8. Spread the batter in the bottom of the pan.
9. Drop the cranberry mixture by tablespoonfuls onto the batter. This will look like way too many cranberries for the batter, but it’ll be ok. Just trust me.
10. Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until the batter is golden brown.

This would be perfect with some ice cream

Notes: I was nervous assembling and cooking this dish. I’ve never made chicken and dumplings before and there didn’t seem to be anywhere near enough of the “dough” to soak up all of the cranberry mixture. Plus, the cranberry mixture was a lot more liquid than I thought it should be. But then I started dropping tablespoonfuls of the cranberry mix onto the dough and interesting things started to happen. The dough started to bubble and almost fizz a bit as the hot liquid hit the baking powder and flour mix. As you can see from the photos, the dumpling dough rose to the top and it was extremely light and fluffy, while a bit chewy at the same time. The cranberries were just sweet enough and the hint of vanilla in the mix was a surprise (well, as much of a surprise as it can be when you know you added it during the cooking process). I’d make this again in a heartbeat and next time I’d probably add some cranberry infused vodka to the berries while cooking.