Homemade Cranberry Juice & Pops

I stocked up on cranberries last fall when they were on sale for a dollar a bag.  I love them, can eat them raw without sugar.  Love Sparkling Cranberries. Love cranberry smoothies, cranberry sauce, cranberry relish, cranberry whatever.  So, why not cranberry juice?  Here is what I did:
Put cranberries in water in a sauce pan.  Bring to a boil.  Simmer for a few minutes but do not crush the berries.  Make sure all the berries are popped (you'll know it when you see it kind of thing).  Then gently, so you don't crush the berries.  Strain the cranberries (I used a sieve, but a colander would work just fine).  All the water is now cranberry juice.  So you see, if you want stronger flavored juice, use less water.  I generally just poured water in and went from there.  You can always add more water afterward.  Now, taste the juice and add sweetener, if you want.  I added regular sugar though I would certainly try honey, agave, or stevia in the future.  Chill it, and you have your own juice.  And yes, it is way better than the stuff you get in the store.

Now for the bonus.  Cranberry Popsicles.

You have all those uncrushed cranberries sitting in the sieve.  Start pushing them through the sieve into a second container.  You want to push all the good pulp out of the berries while leaving the skin behind.  This is the same process for making cranberry sauce. Discard the skins.  Add sweetener of your choice (or maybe even apple juice or some other kind of naturally sweet liquid) and a liquid (I added some water and lime juice).  Add just enough liquid to get a runny consistency.  Taste it.  If you skimp on the sweetener, your pops won't be sweet (which is just fine, but I wanted a dessert).  Here I added a bit of stevia because of how tart the cranberries and lime tasted and I added sugar too-- because I think sugar tastes better than stevia.  Now pour into you popsicle molds, put in the freezer, add the sticks after about 45 minutes.  Done!