Make White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

This is the most amazing White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies recipe. The cookies are dangerously delicious and really simple to make and I like simple. These soft, chewy, thick, homemade cookies are just the thing to eat alongside your favourite cup of coffee and will really satisfy that need for something sweet.

Features of this recipe

These delicious White chocolate and Cranberry cookies are packed with white chocolate chips and dried cranberries. These are a few of the other good things about them.

• This is a simple recipe to make, with no complicated cooking techniques. It involves mixing the ingredients together and allowing the dough to chill for a while (1 hour in the fridge).
• Not too sweet – sweetness is balanced out by the dried cranberries.
• Makes soft, buttery cookies, perfect for your cookie monster.
• Using a little cocoa gives it great colour, which makes the white of the chocolate chips really stand out – pretty. It also adds a little extra chocolate flavour making these cookies even more irresistible.

Ingredients in White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies recipe

These ingredients are all fairly ordinary and likely to be in your pantry, waiting for the right recipe.

• white chocolate chips – I’m using white chocolate chips in this recipe to give a delcious creamy sweetness.
  • substitute with a chopped up bar of white chocolate if you wish. Note that ordinary white chocolate will melt into the cookie dough whereas chocolate chips will be more obvious in the baked cookie.
• egg, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda – to help the cookies to be light and airy
• plain flour – plain white flour to structure the cookie
• cranberries, vanilla extract, cocoa – for flavour and texture.

Making White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

This is a very easy and straightforward method and if you’ve made cookies before it is going to be very familiar to you.

These homemade cookies are made in 4 easy stages.

Making the cookie dough

• Beat the butter and the sugar together; light brown muscovado and caster sugar, which is followed by beating in the egg and the vanilla extract.
• Add in the flour, salt, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and the cocoa. Mix this thoroughly together.
• Add in the chocolate chips and the dried cranberries.

Now you have the cookie dough. The next stage is all about shaping the dough.

Shaping the cookies

• Line a baking tray with baking parchment or grease carefully so that your cookies don’t stick to the tray when they bake.
• Use a cookie scoop or a tablespoon and scoop out, 1 scoops worth or 2 tablespoon amounts of dough and gently shape them into a ball. This is quite a sticky dough but this is easy enough.
• Place them on the baking tray.
• Continue in this way until all the dough is used up. You should have 12 good sized balls of cookie dough sitting on the tray.
• Place the cookies into the fridge for between 30 minutes and 1 hour to chill. Doing this makes a thicker cookie as it prevents the dough from spreading out too far on the tray when it bakes.

Baking the Cookies

This is another pretty straightforward step.

• Preheat the oven. Use an oven thermometer to be sure that it reaches the right temperature. It is surprising how different it can be sometimes. All your baking will be more successful for taking this simple step.
• Remove the baking tray from the fridge and place it in the oven, Set the oven timer for 10 minutes (they may take up to twelve minutes)
• After ten minutes check to see if the cookies are baked. They should have firm outsides but still be slightly soft in the middle. Give them an extra one to two minutes if they seem under done.
• Remove the tray from the oven and allow them 5 minutes to sit and cool on the tray. They’ll be a bit fragile until then.
• Take them off the tray and place on a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Variations you can make to this recipe

These are a few ideas that will help you make a few very pleasant adjustments to the basic cookie recipe should you want to ring the changes. We’ve tried them all at some point. This is definitely a tried and tested recipe.

• substitute some of the chocolate chips for raisins.
• chop up a white chocolate bar if you can’t find white chocolate chips.
• use dark chocolate chips instead of the white ones or use a mix of both.
• add 50g of chopped hazelnuts or walnuts (1/3 cup) with the chocolate chips. This is quite amazing.
• dot a few extra chocolate chips on the surface of the cookie dough before you bake it. This way the chocolate is clearly visible once they’ve baked to perfection.

Storing White Chocolate Chip and Cranberry Cookies

Now you’ve made the best white chocolate and cranberry cookies you’ve ever tasted, you are going to need to store them somewhere. They’re best stored in an airtight container for up to 4 days. (I bet they don’t last that long!)

You may store the dough in the fridge for up to 4 days. Bake it as you would the fresh dough. You may need to allow a minute or two extra for baking, just ensure that the edges are set and the centres are still a little bit soft.

Freezing the White Chocolate and Crambery Cookie dough

The best way to do this, in my opinion, is to take 2 tablespoon amounts of cookie dough, shape them into a ball shape and freeze them in an open tray. Once they’ve frozen, layer them with baking parchment and store them in the freezer for up to 2 months.

When you want cookies, take the frozen dough out of the container and bake at the same temperature as you would fresh dough. You may need to allow a couple of extra minutes for them to bake.

Freezing the baked Cookies

Freeze the baked cookies on an open tray and once frozen, pop them all together in a suitable container. You may wish to layer them with baking parchment to keep them separate so that you can easily thaw them one at a time.

Thaw on the countertop until they reach room temperature. If you’re feeling like spoiling yourself, warm it a little in the microwave (just a few seconds) and enjoy a gorgeous, soft, chewy white chocolate and cranberry cookie (Remember that hot melted chocolate can scald so do this carefully.)

Be successful making these cookies

• Read the recipe through carefully so that you know what you need to do.
• Allow at least 30 minutes of the chilling time to ensure that your cookies are nice and thick. An hour is better.
• Set your oven temperature carefully so that your cookies cook in the specified time. Use an oven thermometer to be confident of your oven temperatures.
• Check that the cookies are done from about 8 minutes into the cooking time. The edges need to be set and the centres still a little soft.

If you like this cookie recipe then you may like these…

• Soft and Chewy Oat and Raisin Cookies
• Lemon Cookies
• Oat and Coconut Cookies
• Peanut Butter Cookies
• Peanut Butter Cookies and Chocolate Chips
• Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
• Shortbread Cookies
• Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Easy Ginger Cookies
• Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies

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