White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

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With the perfect combination of sweet and creamy white chocolate and tart cranberries, these are a great holiday cookie. This soft and chewy cookie with white chocolate chunks and deep red cranberries, makes a beautiful cookie for this winter. 

With Christmas right around the corner, for me that means it’s time for holiday baking! When it is cold outside, there is something so special about smelling warm cookies baking in the oven. I normally do some sort of Christmas cookie tin each year for my friends and neighbors. It is a lot of work and each year I try to talk myself out of it, but I enjoy it so much.

These white chocolate cranberry cookies have been added to my traditional Christmas baking list. I love using white chocolate for holiday baking. It gives it such a rich, sweet and creamy texture. When you add the dried cranberries, it gives the cookies a burst of tanginess and a bright red color. These mix-ins are enclosed in my super chewy buttery cookie base that I use for my chocolate chip cookies. This time I added a touch more flour to hold the weight of the white chocolate chunks and dried cranberries.

So you get a soft chewy cookie with sweet melty white chocolate and tang from the cranberry. Um, yes please.

I literally had to send these to my husband’s work in fear that I would literally eat all 22 cookies by myself.

I think the most important thing to make a good cookie is the bake time. You want to take these out of the oven before they are fully cooked. If you leave them in too long, you won’t get the soft and chewy centers. So put them in the oven and start watching them around 9 minutes. If you see the golden brown edges around the center, it’s time to take them out. They will finish cooking on the baking sheet. Then leave them for 5 or so minutes on the baking sheet before transferring them to a cooling rack.

The other thing that is in most of my cookie recipes is cornstarch. I know, weird right? Well, the cornstarch helps lighten up the proteins in the flour and makes the cookie soft and tender. They also help the cookie to stop from spreading which is especially important for decorated sugar cookies.

How to Make White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

• Combine your dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt and cornstarch). Set it aside.
• Cream together your butter and sugars (brown sugar and white sugar). Make sure your butter is at room temperature. And, make sure to use brown sugar which helps makes the cookie more chewy and less crispy.
• Add the egg and vanilla to the butter/sugar mixture.
• Add the dry ingredients and mix until it is just incorporated.
• Add the white chocolate chunks and dried cranberries. Use a high quality white chocolate bar chopped up into chunks. You can use white chocolate chips, but I think using the white chocolate bar tastes better.
• Chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, preferably at least 1-2 hours. Chilling the dough helps the cookie from spreading and also helps deepen the flavors mixed in the cookie.
• Preheat your oven to 325 degrees (160 c).
• Scoop the dough into balls using a scooper (about two tablespoons) onto a parchment lined baking sheet.
• Bake for 9-10 minutes. Remove from the oven when you see light golden brown edges. Leave them on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes to finish cooking and the transfer them to a cooling rack.

Tips to Making the Perfect Cookie

• Measure your ingredients. If you want to have accurate measurements, get a digital scale. It’s really important you get the right measurements, especially the flour. It doesn’t matter how I scoop it into the measuring cup, I still get a different amount each time. So spend the $20 and get you a digital scale. Seriously, just do it.
• Chill the dough. Don’t skip this step. I know you want cookies now, but you HAVE to chill that dough. Just like I tell the kids, the cookie dough needs to take a nap. This time helps the butter chill so that your cookies hold together and won’t spread too much.
• Use a scooper to form the dough balls. This is the easiest way to make sure you have the exact same amount of cookie dough in each cookie. Plus it saves time scooping the dough onto the baking sheet instead of forming balls in your hands.
• Do not over bake. Pull the cookies out as soon as you see the light golden edge around the cookie. They will look like they are not done in the middle. That’s ok. They will finish baking on the baking pan. This is critical to getting the soft chewy center.
• Use a good quality baking sheet. Once I started using these Wilton baking sheets, I could tell a difference in my cookies. They bake well and evenly distribute the heat.

These white chocolate cranberry cookies make 22 cookies. If you like this recipe, check out my other cookie recipes:

• Chocolate chip cookies 
• Decorator sugar cookie cut-outs
• Peanut butter oatmeal M&M cookies 
• Sugar cookie bars 
• Oatmeal Creme Pies