Small Win #13: The most Christmassy cocktail
An ode to the cranberry
Welcome to Small Wins, a newsletter that shares a small win with you every other week — one that has the power to improve your cooking, your home, your life. It’s great to have you here!
This is it: the final small win of 2024! It’s been almost 6 months of writing this newsletter and my biggest hope is that it has been helpful.
To see out the year, here’s a Christmassy cocktail — a cranberry fizz of sorts — straight from the brain of master mixologist Ryan Chetiyawardana (aka Mr Lyan’s London). It’s a drink that has all the flavour hallmarks of the festive period (cranberries, orange, cloves, Cognac, fizz) yet feels very grown-up and chic.
And whilst on the subject of cranberries, permit me to wax lyrical about them for a moment? Outside of Christmas these tart berries don’t get a look in (at least, not in the UK) but I’m here to tell you to make the most of their current presence by grabbing an extra bag or two for the freezer — they can bring such brightness and flavour to the months of January and February, if only you’ll let them.
Finally, a big thank you for reading Small Wins this year. The newsletter will take a brief one-week holiday before returning on the 4th Jan with the vinaigrette that all my friends go wild for — not to be missed.
Have a wonderful Christmas!
Love,
Alexina
Coming up on Small Wins — The vinaigrette that all my friends go wild for; the best chocolate sauce happens to be vegan; the delicious, nutritious 20-minute meal that I make every week; two things you must do with blood oranges.
For my Small Wins+ community — For January we’ll be covering Vegetarian Cooking 101! My mum was vegetarian for several years so this is how I eat a lot of the week — I hope it will be helpful to any of you seeking to introduce more vegetable-led cooking into your lives.
CRANBERRIES: NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS
The season for cranberries runs from September to December, yet you’d be hard-pressed to find them in supermarkets outside of the final month of the year — such is their temporary favour. So my question is this: how has such a brilliantly shiny, scarlet and flavoursome berry never broken out of its Christmas box in the UK? Could it be because they’re native to America? Or grown in acidic bogs (see image below)? I can’t help but wonder.
I feel, unequivocally, that cranberries are the most important part of the Christmas dinner table, for the colour and brightness of flavour that they bring to an otherwise beige spread. But cranberries are much more than just a Christmas curiosity: just as strawberries are the essence of summer, cranberries are the berry of winter. Rouge, classy, jewel-like: they deserve more of our love and attention — I challenge you to think beyond the cranberry sauce, and beyond the Cosmo.
Cranberries are the only berry found exclusively in North America. First discovered by the native Indians, for whom cranberries were not just a food staple but also a symbol of peace, today a whole industry exists around this berry in the states of Wisconsin and Massachusetts, which produce 80% of the country’s supply. The domestic market is considerable, to be sure, but the agricultural cooperative Ocean Spray (might sound familiar) also sell into continental Europe, the UK and Mexico, savvily offering products such as cranberry juice and ‘craisins’ that are available year round.
But whilst I love a dried cranberry — especially in a cookie — part of me feels sad that these forms have distracted us from the fresh berries themselves, which is where they shine brightest. Such a unique flavour, combining assertive tartness with faint bitterness, makes cranberries surprisingly versatile: they are delicious in baked goods, where their sharpness balances out the sweetness of ingredients such as white chocolate and pear. Likewise, they can brilliantly counter the fattiness of meats including pork and duck. Cranberries complement spice beautifully in both savoury and sweet situations; they are charming in chutneys, where they add nuance and piquancy; and, yes, they lend fabulous acidity to cocktails.
As with most fruits and vegetables that are intense in colour and flavour, cranberries are very, very good for you: full of manganese, vitamin C and E. Like grapefruit they are anti-fungal — they can last months in the fridge — courtesy of the plant compound quercetin, an antioxidant that has been shown to inhibit the proliferation of cancerous cells relating to prostate, cervical, lung and breast cancer1. In short: cranberries are a true nutritional (and flavour) powerhouse!
Conveniently, this berry freezes beautifully, so consider this your cue to pop an extra bag of cranberries in your freezer this winter: they can be used straight from frozen (no trimming or prep required) and will bring some brightness to the thanklessly cold months of January and February.
THE MOST CHRISTMASSY COCKTAIL
From Good Things to Drink with Mr Lyan and Friends by Ryan Chetiyawardana
The spiced cranberry syrup in this recipe tastes like Christmas itself (and also, curiously, like Haribo Tangfastics) — but once you add the cognac and Cointreau? Well, it becomes a distinctly adult affair.
This quantity of cranberry syrup makes enough for around 15 cocktails.
Ingredients
For the cranberry syrup:
1 orange, a couple of strips of zest pared off, then juiced
3 tbsp (around 35g / 1 1/2 oz) fresh cranberries
100ml cranberry juice
1 star anise
3 cloves
100g white sugar (granulated or caster)
Per cocktail:
1 tbsp curaçao (not the blue stuff, something like this — or use Cointreau)
1 tbsp cognac
1 tbsp spiced cranberry syrup
Ice, to stir
Around 100ml chilled champagne (or crémant), to finish
Method
For the cranberry syrup:
To make the cranberry syrup, add the cranberries, orange and cranberry juices, anise, clove and peel to a small pot along with the sugar and warm gently.
Stir to dissolve the sugar then remove from the heat. When cool, pass the syrup through a fine sieve, then fish out the whole cranberries and add them back in.
For the cocktail:
To a mixing glass or jug filled halfway with ice, add the cognac, curaçao and cranberry syrup according to how many cocktails you’re making. Briefly stir with a spoon, then divide between champagne flutes. Add one or two of the cranberries from the syrup to each glass then top up with champagne.
Want something equally as Christmassy but as simple as can be?
You cannot go wrong with a sloe gin fizz — a little sloe gin in the bottom of a flute, topped up with Champagne or crémant (thank you Julia, for putting me onto these!).
SOME FAVOURITE RECIPES USING FRESH CRANBERRIES
I promise the inclusion of a fair few of my own recipes in the list below isn’t shameless self-promotion: it’s simply a reflection of how few recipes (especially savoury ones) employ fresh cranberries — a miscarriage of justice if ever there was one. Also: they are delicious! If you’d like me to write any of them up, simply drop me a note in the comments.
My Saffron, Yoghurt & Cranberry Persian(ish) Rice from Bitter
Alice Hart’s Cranberry, Fig & Pear Chutney with Ginger
My Pork & Cranberry Meatballs from Bitter
Deb Perelman’s Cranberry Crumb Bars with Mulling Spices
My Pear & Cranberry Pie from Bitter (truly, the best pie)
Nigel Slater’s Cranberry and Apple Frangipane Tart (I like it best with pear)
And let us not forget that, as Nigella told us, cranberry sauce goes fabulously well over vanilla ice cream
FURTHER READING + RESOURCES
In case you are scrabbling around last minute for gifts, check out the Small Wins Actually Helpful Gift Guide for inspiration — or consider gifting an annual subscription to Small Wins!
If you are a fan of mixing up cocktails at home, I can wholeheartedly recommend Ryan Chetiyawardana’s book Good Things to Drink with Mr Lyan and Friends.
Jeong JH, An JY, Kwon YT, Rhee JG, Lee YJ. Effects of low dose quercetin: cancer cell-specific inhibition of cell cycle progression. J Cell Biochem. 2009 Jan 1;106(1):73-82. doi: 10.1002/jcb.21977. PMID: 19009557; PMCID: PMC2736626.
Finally managed to get hold of cranberries to make the cranberry and orange breakfast muffins from Bitter and they are 👌
Congrats to an amazing 6 months of useful insightful writing here’s to 2025