How to cook cranberry curd

Combine cranberries, water & lemon juice in a pan over medium high heat, stirring occasionally. Once they come to a boil, reduce heat & simmer.

Let simmer for about five minutes, until cranberries have burst & broken down.

While this happens, put about 2 inches of water in another saucepan on medium-high heat to get started for later.

After cranberries are cooked, blend I'm a blender or food processor. I used an immersion blender. After blended, strain cranberry mix in a fine sieve over a bowl.

You'll have to put some elbow grease into it, stirring & mushing to push the cranberry goop through.

It'll look something like this. Since it's so thick, you'll actually have to scrape the bottom of the sieve periodically to get the cranberry goop into the bowl.

After some mushing & stirring, you should end up like this. Ta da! Discard solids left in sieve.

After that's done, combine both sugars & butter in another bowl.

Have your egg & yolks ready to mix in a separate bowl. Makes life easier.

Mix sugars & butter until well combined. My butter was still a little hard, since our kitchen runs cool, but no worries about lumps. They'll break down as you go.

Add egg yolks & eggs one at a time, combining well after each addition...

Until it looks like this!

Now add cranberry goo & cornstarch...

And stir to combine...

Until it's this lovely red mixture!

That pan of water from before? It should look like this by now. A low simmer.

Place bowl of mixture on top of simmering water, or if you have a proper double boiler, use that if you wish.

Cook over simmering water about ten minutes, until thickened, stirring frequently. Do keep an eye on it, so it doesn't scorch or get a weird skin.

Your thermometer should read about 160°F when done, to make sure the eggs are cooked enough to eliminate food borne illness. Remove from heat & let stand 5 minutes to cool some.

After the 5 minutes is up, stir in the Grand Marnier. I ended up using triple sec because I couldn't get GM in time for this.

Once completely cooled, keep covered & refrigerated for up to one week. Enjoy on toast, ice cream, anything you'd like!