Dried Cranberry Jelly/Jam (No Gelatin!)

Recipes with cranberries are essential to make for Thanksgiving. Do you need one at the last minute? It is the quickest and easiest recipe using dried cranberries. Whether you sieve them or not, you end up with cranberry jelly or jam. Which one would you prefer?

We do love homemade fruit sauces. If you are looking for more fruity recipes, try our easy strawberry purée, our cinnamon berries sauce which we often pair with panna cotta, or this vibrant raspberry sauce which we top our baked cheesecake.

What to expect?

This recipe is for you if you are out of fresh cranberries or want to make jelly or jam in 5 minutes. Since dried cranberries soften quickly, all you need to decide is whether you sieve it or not. If you do, you end up with homemade jellied cranberry sauce, but if you don’t, you’ll have a perfect cranberry jam.

We developed this recipe because we wanted to make a festive and spectacular appetizer for Christmas. My husband had this delicious pistachio nut cheese recipe, but we paired it with cranberries to turn it up a notch. Doesn’t it look amazing?

Ingredients

If you want to make cranberry jelly or jam at home, you need only three ingredients and 5 minutes of cooking time. It sounds perfect.

• Dried cranberries → We recommend unsweetened ones with no preservatives or added oil (like this one here).
• Sweetener of your choice → We prefer to use cane sugar, coconut sugar, or maple syrup.
• Thickener → We used agar-agar powder since it is the fastest thickener I have ever used. Seriously. It is so fast. If you don’t prepare your mold in advance, you may not have a chance to look for it once you get the mixture off the stove.

🛒 You can find detailed measurements for all ingredients in the printable version of the recipe card at the bottom of this post.

Instructions

Preparations

• If you buy unsweetened ones with no preservatives or added oil (like this one), you don’t need to do any preparations.
• If you have sweetened, oil-coated craisins, we recommend soaking them in hot water for 5 minutes to wash away their sugary, oily coating.

Cooking

1. Take a saucepan and add soaked/dried cranberries, water, and cane sugar.
2. Bring it to a boil and simmer for 5-6 minutes until the cranberries are soft.

3. Take a tall and thin container and pour the cooked cranberry sauce into it.
4. Blend it with a hand blender as smoothly as you can.

Jam or Jelly?

You need to decide here if you want to make jam or jelly.

• If you prefer to make cranberry jelly, get a fine-mesh strainer and strain it directly on top of the saucepan, you used to separate the pulp from the juices. See photos #5-6. Push the pulp gently but firmly against the inside of the strainer with a wooden pestle or rubber spatula. Scrape and repeat.
• If you want cranberry jam, you can skip straining and go directly to thickening. In this case, agar-agar will only be able to thicken the sauce to a perfect jam consistency. We love to make yummy peanut butter and jam sandwiches using this quick cranberry jam. 🙂

Thickening

7. Add agar-agar powder to the strained or unstrained cranberry sauce. Stir thoroughly. Bring it to a boil and simmer for 5-6 minutes on medium-high heat to activate the thickener. 
8. Pour it into a silicone mold of your choice. You can see that agar-agar acts fast in a couple of minutes.

Top tips

• Why do you need a thickener? → Cranberries usually have natural pectin, making a great sauce or jam without any thickener. However, add extra pectin, gelatin, or other types if you require jelly consistency. Since we are a vegan blog, we prefer to use plant-based thickeners like agar-agar powder.
• How to use agar-agar? → Like any other thickener, it also requires heat to activate it. This means you should heat any liquid with agar-agar over medium-high heat for 5-6 minutes. Unlike starch, where you can see the mixture thickening immediately, you will not see any changes in texture with agar-agar during this 5-6 minutes. However, it sets quickly(!!!). So prepare your mold in advance, as you will not have time to search for it later!
• Do you need a unique strainer? → We use a regular fine-mesh strainer. A chinois strainer or a food mill also works. 

Variations

Jelly in a tin can

The cranberry jelly was often eaten from a tin can or plunked down to look like a reddish jiggly tin can with ridges. If you want to re-create it, you don’t need a fancy mold. Take a regular tin can (maybe that had canned fruit and not spicy beans) or a jar and pour the hot cranberry sauce into it. When it sets, take a butter knife and go around the rims gently. Turn it upside down and slide it onto a plate. Happy Thanksgiving!

So what do you plan for Thanksgiving dinner? Check out our 35+ vegan thanksgiving recipes if you need more delicious ideas for the festivities.

Jelly in a bundt mold

A little more festive would be to use a silicone bundt mold. You can see it in action in our pistachio nut cheese recipe. Or get creative and use a gingerbread house mold or a snowflake mold to make it unique and spectacular.

Jelly gummies

You know what? Cranberry jelly is not only for Thanksgiving. We like making jelly gummies for our daughters as a treat. And they love them. We often use our heart-shaped jelly mold, which you may have already seen in our vegan Baileys recipe, as ice cubes.

Flavor ideas

If you want to add some additional flavors to cranberries, we have some ideas:

• Cinnamon – We love cranberries with cinnamon or any berries. Add ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon to two cups of dried cranberries. So yummy! If you use a cinnamon stick, don’t forget to take it out before blending.
• Other spices – Do you love spiced cranberry jelly? A pinch of pumpkin spice, nutmeg, or allspice can give this jelly or jam a unique twist.
• Orange zest – Cranberries and oranges go hand in hand. Add two teaspoons of freshly grated orange zest. Make sure you buy oranges with edible peel.
• Ginger – Add ¼ teaspoon of freshly grated ginger before blending to give a spicy, peppery flavor to it.
• Apple cider – Cook dried cranberries in apple cider instead of water, you’ll love it.

Allergen info

This Cranberry Jelly/Jam recipe is dairy-free and egg-free.

• Vegan – All suggested ingredients are supposed to be vegan.
• Nut-free – All ingredients are supposed to be nut-free, but always check the packaging before using any ingredient, especially spices.
• WFPB-friendly (whole foods plant-based) – If you use maple syrup, date paste, or coconut sugar, this recipe is compliant with the WFPB diet.
• Gluten-free – All proposed ingredients are supposed to be gluten-free, but always check the packaging for cross-contamination info, especially for spices.
• Soy-free – All ingredients are supposed to be soy-free.

More recipes with fruits

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UPDATED: This recipe was originally posted in Dec 2019. More info, tips, and details were added, and it was republished in Nov 2022.