Last year, in an attempt to make jellied cranberry sauce, I discovered cranberry butter–or cranberry taffy, cranberry tar, cranberry glue, take your pick.

I loved my cranberry butter.

This year, I’ve picked a bunch of cranberries so I can make both. With the first batch, I aimed for jellied cranberry sauce and got it. Woot!

With the second batch, I aimed for cranberry butter and decided to try adding allspice and cinnamon. Now, last year, the butter was an accident. I don’t know exactly why or how I got the gloppy stuff I did; to the best of my knowledge, all I did was triple the recipe. For the second batch this year, I didn’t triple the recipe, but rather tried a shorter boiling period, reducing the liquid less.

It didn’t work. I had two batches of jellied cranberry sauce, one spiced. I haven’t decided if I prefer it with or without the spices.

So I tried a third batch.

Since I liked the butter so much, I thought maybe I had inadvertently added too much sugar. I like sweet. Maybe I mis-counted the number of cups I added. So I tried adding extra sugar this time around, and I stirred pretty much constantly.

I now have three batches of jellied cranberry sauce: one regular, one spiced, one extra-sweet.

Hrmph.

I’ve searched for cranberry butter recipes online, and what I get are recipes that combine cranberries with butter-butter, the dairy kind. I have recipes for apple butter; I have recipes for jellied cranberry sauce; I have a recipe for cranberry ketchup. They’re all pretty much the same. I can’t figure out what alters the texture, what makes the liquid set up and what makes it gooey.

I’m not giving up. I’ll keep experimenting until I run out of cranberries. If any of you kitchen or cranberry gurus have ideas or advice, I’m listening.