Cranberry Sauce

Homemade cranberry sauce is simple to make and can be altered depending on personal preferences. Feel free to add your favorite seasonings or fruits to this recipe to develop your own cranberry sauce. 

Ingredients:

1 bag of fresh whole cranberries

1 cup of sugar

Approximately 1 & 1/2 cups of water

Peel of 1 orange

Pinch of fresh grated ginger

Juice from 1/2 an orange

Put cranberries, sugar and water in a pot and boil until mixture thickens. Add enough water to barely cover the cranberries. Peel 1 orange with a peeler and add the peels to the cranberries before they are boiling. Also add juice from half an orange for flavor, as well as a pinch of fresh grated ginger. Once the mixture thickens, let it cool and then serve.

Ginger Snap Pie Crust

Ginger is one of Carly's favorite foods to cook with. It can be used in so many different kinds of dishes and one Thanksgiving when Carly was cooking lots of amazing dishes she had one of her wonderful ideas. She was making everyone a pumpkin cheesecake and wanted to create a unique crust for it. She created this ginger snap pie crust and one of the great things about it is that it can be used with several different pies or cakes whenever you want to change up the type of crust. 

Ingredients:

1 & 1/2 cups of crushed ginger snaps (or graham crackers or any type of crunchy cookies)

1 tblsp. sugar

5 tblsp. butter

Mix ingredients until mixture is crumbly, not pasty. Press in bottom of spring-form pan and use the bottom of a glass to press mixture about one-third up the pan's sides. Bake for 5 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Baking tip from Carly: "Don't ever use imitation vanilla extract. Make sure that the vanilla extract is 100% from vanilla."