This year it was my turn to make the cranberry dish. Mom has always done a "cranberry relish ring" recipe with an entire orange in it and a can of lemon lime soda. I think the white part of the orange makes it a little bitter. So I knew I wanted to leave that out. I also didn't want to used the soda- maybe it would be less tart. I looked around on allrecipes.com and found a recipe for a layered salad that was very similar to Mom's but it had nuts and apples in it - I didn't want to use nuts and I have pomegranates I wanted to use instead of apples. So I combined and modified a couple of recipes and this is what I came up with:
1 Orange
1 package of fresh cranberries (about 2 cups)
1/2 c sugar
6 oz red gelatin (I used strawberry this time)
1 cup water
10 oz crushed pineapple with the juice (I had a fresh one and thought about using it, but didn't - bet it would be good though! I used half of a 20 oz can and just eye-balled it)
2 pomegranates (about 1 cup pomegranate seeds)
Zest the orange, be careful not to get the white part, and set aside. Cut off the peel and cut in half. Wash and sort the cranberries. Put orange and cranberries in a blender or food-processor to chop finely. Boil the water and dissolve the gelatin in the water. Mix the cranberries with sugar until dissolved. Put the cranberries and pomegranate seeds into a large dish. pour gelatin over and mix well. Add the crushed pineapple with juice and stir until combined. Then allow to set up overnight.
(I tasted it before it was set up - so far it's pretty yummy!)
It's supposed to have a whipped cream/cream cheese topping on it - I haven't made it yet. But when I do, I'll post it.
The topping is 1 cup whipping cream and 1 -8oz package of cream cheese. Whip the cream and beat in the cream cheese. I added 1/4 to 1/2 cup powdered sugar to make it sweeter. This made enough topping to cover 2 9x13 pans of jello (double the first part of the recipe).
Variation:
We made this recipe again, but didn't have oranges.-So I used 4 or 5 key limes- and left out the pineapple. I added a little extra water- not much. It was good! We didn't do the topping on it, but I think it would have been better with the topping because it's tart.
