spent cranberry crumble and bread

In continuation of my obsession of using "spent" or used beer brewing ingredients, here is a crumble that uses the cranberry mush leftover from our recently bottled Christmas Dinner Cranberry Porter. I also threw in a chunk of frozen pumpkin puree and some crabapple syrup that was canned in the summer.

In the background, you can see my cranberry walnut bread. I followed Rose Levy Beranbaum's recipe and just kneaded in as much cranberry mush as I could. It is pretty dense because I ran out of all-purpose flour and substituted locally stone-ground whole-wheat.

"christmas dinner" cranberry porter

We started this beer around Thanksgiving. It's in bottles now and should be ready in time for Christmas! It's a cranberry porter roughly based on a recipe we found online. You may have already heard mention of this porter in Eric's spent grain bread and pancakes posts. I thought I would give it a formal introduction.

We came up with its name "Christmas Dinner" while boiling the wort. Here is the back story: do you remember in the Muppets/Sesame Street Christmas special when the Swedish Chef shows up to prepare Christmas dinner and mistakes Big Bird for the Christmas turkey? Swedish Chef tried to cook Big Bird! Luckily Big Bird won over the Swedish Chef with his charm and a gift of chocolate covered bird seed. They end up eating a vegetarian meal of shredded wheat and cranberry sauce.

So, yes, that's how our beer got its name. Who needs meat for Christmas dinner when you can have beer?