Cranberry Crunch

How we make it.

1 cup sugar
3/4 cup water
1 1/2 to 2 cups fresh cranberries
4 to 5 apples
4 T. lemon juice
1 1/2 cups uncooked rolled oats
3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup melted butter
1 1/2 T. all-purpose flour

Heat oven to 350 degrees (325 if using glass baking dish). Mix sugar in water in medium saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat after 1 min.; add cranberries and cook until they pop (about 1 min.). Remove pan from heat.

Peel and core apples; slice thinly and place in bottom of oblong dish. Sprinkle with lemon juice. Pour cranberry mixture over apples.

Place oats, brown sugar, melted butter and flour in a bowl and mix. Layer over fruit.

Bake 35 to 40 minutes, browning top lightly. 

May be used as salad or dessert.

Petie looking fancy in 1950.

Why we make it.

Petie was my hearty, sporty, lovely and kind great aunt. She was a constant in my childhood at my Nana's, having live with her, along with their other sister Catty, all of her adult life as neither ever married. She had a gentle voice and twinkle in her eye and was always up for fun. This was her favorite, Cranberry Crunch. I can't remember when we started making Petie's Cranberry Crunch at the holidays, but it's one of my favorite things on the table. I've never seen anything like it anywhere else. The fruit is a tart combination of fresh cranberries and Granny Smith apples topped with a toasty, buttery oatmeal cookie crisp. Substitute this marvel for whatever gloopy cranberry you had on the table for tribute's sake. This cranberry dish actually adds something. Like Petie says, it's part dessert/part salad in the old-fashioned meaning, which is to say it can go beside your turkey or after it. It can be eaten hot, cold or room temperature, and the leftovers are divine. That's why we make it.

Petie's recipe, verbatim