Apple Cranberry Sauce

This apple cranberry sauce is great as a substitute for plain cranberry sauce, served on top of oatmeal, or just to eat plain. The added apples make for a great sugar-free cranberry sauce, sweetened with a bit of optional maple syrup, as an alternative to pre-made or the standard white sugar version.

Serve this with any roast at your holiday table or Sunday dinner, or try it with a roasted vegetable pie or hot water crust pie – both are delicious vegetarian mains for a special meal. You can also use it as a traditional lingonberry sauce substitute and serve with meatballs, Swedish or otherwise!

This is ready in just a few minutes, keeps well for several days, and can be frozen. It’s well worth making yourself and takes hardly any time at all.

Ingredient Notes and Substitutions

• Apples: a good cooking apple, like boskoop, is excellent here. You want a fairly sweet apple to avoid the need for adding too much other sweetener in order to balance out the tart cranberries.
• Cranberries: use either fresh or frozen, with no changes to the quantity or timing. Dried cranberries can’t be substituted.
• Maple syrup: or honey, if preferred, or another liquid sweetener. Maple syrup adds a nice flavour combination. Date syrup, for example, is a bit too strong here.
• Coconut oil: older cranberry sauce recipes always add a knob of butter at the end to add richness, and this is following the same concept. Use refined coconut oil to avoid any added coconut taste, or use vegan or dairy butter.

Recipe Notes

Peeling the apples is an optional step, but it does improve the texture of the sauce. If you prefer to hold onto the higher nutritional benefits of unpeeled apples, leave them as is.

While it is possible to can this recipe using a pressure canner, I can’t provide safe instruction on that and don’t recommend it unless you’re a canning expert. It does not contain enough sugar or acid for regular water bath canning.

How to Store

Storage: keep in a sealed container in the refrigerator for up to one week. Since it doesn’t contain much added sugar, the sauce doesn’t last as long.

Freezing: transfer cooled sauce into an airtight container and freeze for up to three months. Thaw in the refrigerator before serving.

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Expert Tips

• Add extra spices: for something more reminiscent of a chutney, add a pinch of hot pepper and other spices you like – think cardamom, cloves, or black pepper.
• Cook to your preference: if you want the apple to dissolve into the sauce, cook for double the time, until the apples break down fully and are no longer noticeable. This makes for a more traditional looking cranberry sauce.

More Easy Sides

Avocado Aioli
Tomato Confit
Roasted Red Cabbage
Mango Avocado Salad

If you make this Cranberry Apple Sauce or any other vegetarian sides on Occasionally Eggs, please take a moment to rate the recipe and leave a comment below. It’s such a help to others who want to try the recipe. For more OE, follow along on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, purchase the Occasionally Eggs cookbook, or subscribe for new posts via email.

This post was first published in December 2014. It has been updated most recently as of January 2023.