- Viral candied cranberries are fun to make but not everyone loved the flavor.
- A shorter soak time and orange juice made for a tarter, less sugary treat.
- Powdered sugar looks pretty, but granulated sugar may be better.
Every year a couple of my friends and I get together and exchange ornaments. We all have eclectic tastes, which makes the exchange delightful, and it’s always paired with a “girl dinner” of “gentle cheeses”—AKA a charcuterie board with mild cheese and some other goodies. Another friend, an excellent baker, always brings dessert, while the third fills in the gaps with drinks, veggies or, in this case, a batch of the viral candied cranberries, which she made the day before our get-together.
“We made the candied cranberries, and no thanks,” she texted us on the day.
Still, we decided that, even though she didn’t like them, we all wanted to try them to see what the fuss was about. Hopefully the rest of us would fall in love with them and save the cranberry experiment from being a total bust. My friend kept them in the fridge for us (and made deviled eggs for the party).
Turns out we weren’t the only ones trying this recipe over the holidays. EatingWell’s editorial director, Carolyn Malcoun, decided to give them a chance as well.
“My 13-year-old daughter, Lila, loves watching food videos on Instagram,” Malcoun says. “She shared the popping cranberries video and asked me to get the ingredients. I wanted to reduce the added sugar a bit, so I bought lemon lime Poppi. She combined a can of that along with some orange juice. While most of the videos we watched said to soak the cranberries overnight, Lila only did it for an hour or two.”
My friend made them with a can of Sprite, following the viral recipe to a T. When she brought them out after we’d had our fill of cheese, I tentatively popped one into my mouth—I like cranberries and cranberry foods, but I was scared.
“Oh, I like them!” I said with surprise. I was expecting a terrible flavor and texture, but the mouthfeel was nice. They were kind of like a natural Gusher, which was one of my favorite afterschool snacks growing up. “I couldn’t believe how good the ‘pop’ was,” Malcoun adds.
After my friend who’d made them tried one again, she agreed that they weren’t gross, as she’d originally thought. We surmised that they age well overnight, and that the flavor settles a bit into something less intense. The flavor of the cranberry was sweet and a little tart, which we all agreed was okay. Malcoun had a similar experience.
“I assume that if we had let them soak longer they would’ve been sweeter, but we liked that they were still pretty tart,” she says. “Especially since we were going to cover them in powdered sugar!” My group decided that we would have preferred an orange-forward flavor and would use juice or a combination of juice and soda next time.
My group didn’t love the powdered sugar on the outside. It makes them really pretty, like little snowballs, but the texture of the powdered sugar was somewhat chalky and the sweetness was too much alongside the tart cranberries. It’s also possible for the powdered sugar to get a bit clumpy—Malcoun recommends doing your best to shake off the excess after tossing the berries in the coating.
While ours weren’t clumpy, we discussed how we’d have liked to do an orange-zest infused sugar using granulated sugar, which, if it worked, would give the same textural result of the sweetness followed by the popping cranberry but a more subtle flavor profile. We thought the look of a candied cranberry with granulated sugar might even be more appetizing—letting the bright red shine through instead of the opaque white of the powdered sugar. But the question remains: Are these actually worth making again?
“They were super fun and we’re planning to make them again to garnish our Christmas yule log,” says Malcoun.
While I agree that the experiment was a fun one and that these candied cranberries are pretty, especially alongside a yule log, my friends and I decided that these cranberries weren’t quite worth the hype. I didn’t hate them, but I wasn’t itching to try more than a couple. There are so many fun desserts and snacks this time of year, and I’d rather make and eat so many other recipes before a viral cranberry—including festive treats like our Cinnamon Roll Cookies and family classics like Italian Love Cake.
