Lexington cookbook author: This cranberry pie is an ‘easy to make’ Christmas dessert

If you’re looking for something to make your holiday meal easier, this pie might be the answer.

The Nantucket Cranberry Pie recipe is a showstopper of a dessert in “The New Christmas Clinic” by Lexington cookbook author Barbara Harper Bach.

And unlike almost everything else about the holiday season, it’s so easy that you can’t go wrong.

“That’s a really a good pie recipe and it’s easy to make,” Harper Bach said recently. “It’s a one-bowl recipe. You just mix it all up and pour it in the pie pan. And then after you let it cool, just cut out a little stencil and dust some powdered sugar on and it’s so pretty.”

It’s one of 70 pages of recipes in her updated popular “Christmas Clinic” cookbook, available at My Favorite Things in Hamburg.

“Everybody that’s tried just absolutely loves it,” she said. And it will work for just about any holiday, as long as you can fresh cranberries.

Harper Bach said that the original from a decade ago was so popular she did several reprints before deciding in the last year to do an updated version.

“I put all the best recipes from the old one and the new good ones in there,” she said.

Besides the cranberry pie, she said a snack recipe for Christmas crackers is always a big hit.

As is the Christmas brisket, which came from her friend Ada Martin, another great Lexington cook.

This one’s the perfect main dish to do all the work for you while you do other things.

“It’s so easy, but it takes a lot of time. You marinate it overnight, stick it in the oven, just let it slow cook all day either in slow cooker or the oven, then you add barbecue sauce,” Harper Bach said. “It’s fabulous, just a great alternative to turkey when everybody’s tired of it after Thanksgiving.”

From Barbara Harper Bach’s “The New Christmas Clinic”