Ginger Apricot Cranberry Sauce

My Secret Recipe Club assignment for December was The Pajama Chef and this is one of the three recipes I made from that blog.  I made my official post for SRC a couple of days ago, but really wanted to share her Ginger Apricot Cranberry Sauce, too!

A bit of background: My husband loves homemade cranberry sauce, so I make it every Thanksgiving.  It's usually the very first Thanksgiving dish I make and I do it the night before.  I like cranberry sauce okay, and in the past have always just used the recipe on the bag of cranberries (cranberries, sugar, water).  It's good, but regardless of how much my husband likes it, we always end up throwing some of it away after a couple of weeks in the fridge.
 
Well, when I made this, we actually finished the entire bowl in a few days.  A first!  If that doesn't speak to how good it is, I don't know what would.  It's such a perfect combination of tart-sweet-spicy (from the ginger) and the apricot actually does manage to hold its own against the cranberry flavor.  I may experiment with other cranberry sauce recipes in the future- found one with crushed pineapple that appeals to my pineapple loving heart!- but this is definitely our default cranberry sauce recipe from now on.

Note: The recipe says to cut the halved apricots into thirds.  I thought that seemed really big and cut them into 6ths.  The apricots kind of fell apart during the cooking process and disappeared into the cranberries.  It still tasted amazing, but I think bigger pieces may be the way to go and will do it this way next year.

Ginger Apricot Cranberry Sauce

12 oz bag fresh cranberries, rinsed and drained

3/4 C sugar
1 t ground ginger

15 oz can halved apricots

 

Place cranberries in a pot and add sugar and ginger.  Drain the apricot juice into a measuring cup and add enough water to make 1 cup liquid.  Add to pot.  Cut apricots into quarters and add to pot.  Stir to mix.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, until the cranberries have popped and are softened, and the sauce cooks down and thickens.  This will take about 15-20 minutes.  Refrigerate sauce until ready to serve.