Jennifer Garner Just Shared the Most “Delicious” Hack for Using Leftover Cranberry Sauce (It’s Brilliant!)

Ashia Aubourg
Ashia Aubourg
From the moment I started remixing ramen noodles into gourmet meals and spending hours watching cooking shows as a puny six-year-old, I knew I found a deep passion for food. While I realized — after taking on a two-year high school internship in an award-winning kitchen — that a…read more
published Dec 2, 2024
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Headshot of Jennifer Garner on colored background
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It’s been a few days since Thanksgiving. While you may have spent this past weekend layering roasted turkey into cheesy lasagna or mixing stuffing into meatballs, there’s one Thanksgiving staple you might be purposely avoiding in your fridge: cranberry sauce.

We get it: Cranberry sauce can be tricky to reinvent into something irresistibly tasty. But instead of spending hours searching blogs or TikTok for ideas, you may want to turn to Jennifer Garner’s Instagram — she’s just shared a brilliant idea for using up the supersweet, jam-like side dish.

“Leftover cranberry sauce. What is it good for?” Garner said in a clip on Instagram. “Leftover cranberry sauce muffins,” she enthusiastically advised. 

In the Instagram clip, Garner captioned the video saying that she discovered the leftover cranberry sauce muffin recipe on the food blog Ahead of Thyme. 

According to the blog, you can make these leftover cranberry sauce muffins in 30 minutes. Start by whisking flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Then, mix the dry ingredients with a wet mixture of creamed butter, sugar, milk, egg, and vanilla. Then, gently fold in your leftover cranberry sauce. Perhaps the most exciting part of this recipe is the oat streusel sprinkled on top for a delicious, crunchy texture. They only take about 18 minutes to bake, so you won’t have to spend hours in the kitchen trying to remix your holiday leftovers.

“They look delicious. I will definitely have to try the recipe,” one person said in the comment section of Garner’s cranberry sauce muffin Instagram tutorial. Another user mentioned how “yummy” these baked goods looked.

So, if you have a container filled with leftover cranberry sauce, don’t let it spoil because you don’t know how to use it — there are plenty of recipes to try, like Garner’s muffins. Or, if you’re looking for a savory route, you can spread it on a grilled cheese made with creamy brie or use it as a sauce for crispy Thanksgiving fritters. 

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