I’m a sucker for anything seasonal. Come fall, my pantry quickly becomes home to an eyebrow-raising amount of canned pumpkin, ready for breads and muffins and – obviously – pies. During the holiday season, I compulsively buy various nogs, even the coconut-based one I know I probably won’t care for, just because it’s a nog, for heaven’s sake, and you can only get it around the holidays!1!!!1!!11! Predictably, though, my burning love for whatever seasonal specialty caught my fancy wanes fairly quickly, replaced by the Next Big Thing, and soon I forget that pumpkin even exists and that I like it very much.

That temporary consumerist love of seasonal eats reared its embarrassing head when I discovered a sad little pint of cranberries languishing in my fridge two weeks ago. The cranberries were a  forgotten holdover from November, when I eagerly stocked up on the local, organic berries when they were on sale at the co-op. Two months later, this unused pint was surprisingly intact. A few berries showed signs of their age – a little bit squishy, not plump and taut like their peers – but overall, they were in good shape. What to do with these poor neglected berries?

Sweet, tart little rectangles.

Make a Saturday night snack, that’s what. Eager for another opportunity to bake from Vegan Desserts: Sumptuous Sweets for Every Season, I was delighted to find a cranberry-reliant recipe appropriately located in the Autumn section of the book. These bars are a happy meeting of tart and sweet, each bite featuring tangy cranberries and the sugary streusel topping. S and I both adored them, and I’ve already shortlisted them for my Thanksgiving desserts next year. But with any luck, I’ll make them again before next November – who knows; there might just be another forgotten pint of berries in my fridge right now.

Do you fall prey to seasonal purchasing binges? What’s your favorite cranberry recipe?