Chunky Cranberry Orange Sauce

This easy homemade cranberry sauce will wow your guests and perfume your kitchen with a lovely smell of orange and cranberry. Make a day or two ahead and refrigerate before serving. When heated, the combination of sugar and pectin (from the cranberry) will thicken the sauce. There is also an easier raw version of this recipe here: Easy Cranberry Sauce. Do you know that cranberry sauce is typically cooked and sweet while cranberry relish is typically raw and more on the tart side?

INGREDIENTS:
2 bag cranberries (24 oz.)
1.5 cups sugar
1 orange (juiced)
Orange zests (from the orange you juiced)

Wash, rinse, and drain the cranberries. In a food processor, chop half of the cranberries. You can also chop all of the cranberries if you don't want whole berries in your relish.

I'm using chopped and whole cranberries for this recipe.

Zests and juice orange. Add into a pot or saucepan along with the cranberries. Juice your orange cut side up so seeds won't fall into the mixture.

Add sugar and mix. Cook mixture on medium heat until sugar dissolves.

Once the mixture bubbles, turn the heat to low. Let the cranberry sauce simmer for about 15 minutes, covered.

Stir occasionally to prevent burning. Turn heat off after 15 minutes.

Let the cranberry sauce cool completely before storing in the refrigerator. Serve with your turkey or Meatless Meatloaf. Or even ice cream!

Matzo Icebox Cake

Here's tasty way of using matzo to celebrate Passover. Turn it into a dessert! This icebox cake is easy to make and almost hassle free. This recipe is inspired by Living Sweet Moments but I have tweaked it a little bit.

The cake is quite sweet so you can also opt to using 1/2 cup sugar instead of 1 cup. Or consider using bittersweet chocolate instead of semi sweet. Consider using sprinkles or chopped nuts to decorate the cake if you want.

Happy Passover. Chag Pesach Sameach!

INGREDIENTS

For Chocolate Cream
2 Sticks Butter (8 oz), softened in room temperature
1 Cup Sugar
2 Eggs
6 oz Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
2 Teaspoon Milk
1 Teaspoon Instant Coffee

For "Cake"
1 Box Matzos (plain)
1/2 Cup Kosher Wine (I can only find Kedem but you can use Manischewitz etc.)

To make chocolate cream:

Whisk butter, sugar and eggs until creamy, for about 5 minutes.

Melt chocolate with milk and coffee in a double boiler.

Pour chocolate mixture into the butter mixture and whisk until smooth.

To assemble the cake:

Use a cookie sheet fitted with a baking rack to catch any drippings.
Place matzo on the cookie sheet and brush with wine. (I realized that I only probably need 1/2 cup of wine instead of 2 cups. But that's wine, I drank the rest of it :P )

Let it sit for about a minute before spreading a little of the chocolate cream on top of it. 

Be aware that if matzo is still wet from the wine, the cream will not stick to the matzo but that's fine.

Continue building your cake with the remaining matzos, wine, and chocolate cream.

Top with the rest of the chocolate cream and cover the sides.

Place in the fridge overnight for cake the set.

Slice and serve! Maybe with the remaining wine, he he.