Baking with an American Beauty—The
Bright and Bouncy Cranberry
by Nancy Baggett
I’ve always liked serving cranberry baked goods and desserts
at traditional autumn and holiday meals. These beautiful berries
not only add welcome color and zesty flavor to the table, but,
being indigenous and at their peak in fall, seem a perfect symbol
of American cool-weather fare.
The name cranberry was contributed by early Dutch settlers to
America, who noticed that the nodding white cranberry blooms had
a long, spike-shaped stamen that looked like a thin bird beak.
They dubbed the plant “kranbeere” which means ‘crane
berry” in English. Some colonists also called cranberries
bounce berries because they bounce when dropped, but this name
didn’t take hold across the land.
The berries did, however, and have always had an important place
in our heritage cooking and baking. They were part of the fall
and winter diet of the native Americans, and they quickly caught
on with the Colonists, too. In 1680, a settler of Burlington,
New Jersey, Mahlon Stacy, wrote to his brother back in Britain
that, “The cranberries, much like cherries for color and
bigness, may be kept until fruit comes in again. An excellent
sauce is made of them for venison, turkeys and other great fowl
and they are better to make tarts than either gooseberries or
cherries....” As the writer commented, the fact that the
cranberries kept well and were available when other fruit was
scarce made them an especially valuable foodstuff at the time.
While cranberries grew along the Massachusetts coastal area
settled by the Pilgrims and 
eventually
began turning up in their recipes, the cranberry sauce and tarts
Mahlon Stacy mentioned probably weren’t around at the 1621
Plymouth Colony harvest celebration we now refer to as the first
Thanksgiving. It’s unlikely that the Pilgrims or the local
Wampanoag tribe had any sugar to sweeten the puckery berries.
(Some sources suggest they might have had maple sugar or syrup,
but there isn’t any hard evidence of this.)
What we do know for sure is that their feast included a lot
of wild game: The earliest account of the event (in a collection
of writings by the Colonists called Mourt’s Relation) noted
that after finishing harvesting, the Pilgrims went “fowling”
and brought back enough poultry to last almost a week. The journal
entry also indicated that their Wampanoag guests contributed venison
from five deer.
Once the Colonists’ living conditions improved and sugar
was on hand however, they often used cranberries in pie and tart
fillings, as well as in various steamed and baked puddings. These
were all types of dishes that were already popular in Europe in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Later, after chemical leavening agents including baking soda
and then baking powder came on the scene in the 1800s, the American
repertoire of cranberry baked goods gradually expanded to include
cobblers, cakes, and slumps. Finally, in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century, the cranberry quick breads and muffin
recipes that we enjoy today appeared.
Tip: Either fresh or partially thawed frozen cranberries will
work fine in this recipe. I buy and freeze extra packages of fresh
cranberries each fall so I can make these muffins all winter long.
Gingered Cranberry Muffins
These muffins are light, high, and handsome, as well as nicely
spicy and aromatic. They make an appealing addition to almost
any meal during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons
and beyond. In contrast to nineteenth century quick breads, which
usually lacked fruit and contained very little sugar, these modern
ones are just slightly sweet and generously studded with bright,
zingy bits of fresh cranberries. For added zip, I add some chopped
crystallized ginger, but the muffins are good without it, too.
2 1/3 cups all-purpose white flour
1 cup granulated sugar, plus 5 tablespoons, divided
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 cups fresh or frozen (thawed) cranberries, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1 cup whole or low-fat milk
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped crystallized ginger (optional)
1 teaspoon finely grated orange zest (orange part of peel)
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Grease 12 standard-sized muffin
tin cups or coat with non-stick spray. (Or, use paper muffin cup
liners, if desired.)
Thoroughly stir together flour, 1 cup sugar, baking powder,
ground ginger, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda in a large bowl.
In a small bowl stir together 3 1/2 tablespoons sugar and cranberries;
set aside.
In a 2-quart saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Remove
pan from heat; stir in milk. Then, using a fork, beat in the eggs,
crystallized ginger (if using), and orange zest until well blended.
Add milk mixture to flour mixture, stirring gently just until
dry ingredients are evenly moistened and incorporated; don't over-mix
or the batter may toughen. Gently stir in the cranberry-sugar
mixture just until evenly distributed throughout.
Using a 1/2-cup measure or large spoon, immediately place a scant
1/2 cup batter in 10 to 12 muffin cups; the cups should be almost
full. Sprinkle muffin tops with reserved 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar,
dividing it among them.
Bake in the middle third of the oven for 14 to 18 minutes or until
the muffins are tinged with brown on top and springy to the touch;
a toothpick inserted into the thickest part should come out clean.
Cool on wire rack 3 or 4 minutes; if no paper liners were used,
gently run a knife around cups and remove muffins from their cups.
Let stand until cooled. They are best when fresh, but can be kept
airtight for a day or so.
Makes 10 or 12 standard-sized muffins.
