Recipes From The Road- Cranberry turnovers

A few Thanksgivings ago Sky and I made too much cranberry sauce and had left overs sitting in our fridge well after the holiday. We had no idea what to do with it and we were tired of eating it with our left over mashed potatoes. Then we had an idea! What if we bought crescent rolls dough, smeared cranberry sauce in the middle of each roll, roll them up and bake them to make tiny cranberry turnovers? So we did, and it made for an awesome dessert!

Following Cranberry Harvest Festival we had fresh cranberries to work with, so I decided to make the turnovers again. Here is the recipe (mainly for cranberry sauce) in case you'd like to do the same this Thanksgiving, when you too inadvertently have too much cranberry sauce at the end of the party. :o)

You will need the following:

4 cups fresh cranberries (or one 12oz bag)
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 roll of crescent rolls dough

You might also consider spicing up the old cranberry sauce recipe with nuts and spices. We added pecans, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves.

Most of the needed ingredients

The first step is to wash the cranberries. While you are washing them, bring the water and sugar to a boil in a sauce pan. Stir to dissolve the sugar, then pour in the cranberries and bring back to a boil.

Pour the cranberries into the boiling sugar water

Reduce heat and simmer the cranberries until they burst (around 10 minutes). Remove from heat. Using a potato masher, mash the cranberries until they are all burst. Then add your other ingredients (nuts and spices).

Mush the cranberries and add other ingredients

At this point, if you were making just cranberry sauce, you would let the mix cool completely and then refrigerate overnight to allow the sauce to thicken. Since we're not making true cranberry sauce, we skip this step and go right to making the turnovers. Preheat the oven following the crescent roll instructions. Roll out the individual crescent rolls. Smear cranberry sauce at the fatter end of the triangle, then roll up the roll. Repeat until all rolls are made.

Smear cranberry sauce on crescent rolls, then roll them up.

Bake the crescent rolls according to the baking instructions on the dough packaging (typically 375 degrees for 10 minutes). When they are baked, arrange on a cooling platter and let cool. Or got ahead and eat one right away! They are yummy when warm!

The finished product!

Enjoy!

Happy Cranberry Baking!

M.