Easy Cranberry Sauce with Pizzaz

I prefer fresh cranberries over commercially canned or frozen although I do home can a few jars for use when fresh cranberries are unavailable or too expensive.  I freeze a bag or two as well.  There is no prep work for freezing.  Just toss the bag in the freezer then wash and clean when you want to use them.  Fresh cranberries tend to be the least expensive here the week before Thanksgiving or Christmas. 

Cranberry sauce is ever so easy to make from fresh cranberries.  Every package has the recipe.  The standard recipe is one 12 oz bag of cranberries, 1 c of water and 1 c of sugar.  I decided to give a bit more pizzaz to my cranberry sauce for this get-together.  Here's the recipe I developed.  Recall this was for a get-together of twenty-five so you can easily reduce by half and the sauce does freeze nicely.

Easy Cranberry Sauce with Pizzaz
recipe by: Garden Gnome

24 oz fresh cranberries
2 c orange juice with pulp
1½ c granulated organic sugar
2 tbsp orange zest

Wash cranberries.  Mix the orange juice and sugar together in sauce pan.  Bring to a boil over medium heat then boil for five minutes.  Stir in cranberries.  Continue cooking until cranberries pop open.  Remove from heat.  Stir in one tbsp of the orange zest.  Pour into serving bowl.  Sprinkle remaining orange zest over the cranberry sauce.