White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

Always soft and chewy, never crunchy, these cookies are the perfect holiday treat to share with friends or hoard for yourself and enjoy all throughout the season. White chocolate and cranberries combine to create a sweet flavor sensation that is a kiss more sophisticated than your average chocolate chip cookie. Making your own cookies from scratch isn’t too hard, but we will show you how with our tried and true method.

Ingredients in White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

Butter Sugar Brown Sugar Vanilla Extract Eggs Flour Baking Soda Salt White Chocolate Chips Dried Cranberries

Tips for Perfect Cookies

Use parchment paper or a silicone mat – these prevent your cookies from sticking to the baking sheet. The benefit of a silicone mat specifically is that it will help your cookies bake more evenly because they don’t conduct heat, so there are no hot spots on which your cookies will burn. Do not over bake – although your cookies may not look quite done when you are taking them out of the oven, keep in mind that they continue to cook on the pan. They say a cookie continues to cook for 20 minutes after it comes out of the oven. During this time, it finishes baking, cools, and firms up. Use a cookie dough scoop – for uniform sized cookies that bake evenly, it is best to use a cookie dough scoop of some kind. If you don’t have a cookie dough scoop, use some kind of scoop and stick to it, it could be a tablespoon. The average cookie dough scoop is 1 ½ tablespoons large. Do the cup trick – for perfectly round cookies, when they are fresh out of the oven, take a glass cup and turn it over the cookie, trapping the cookie inside. Twirl the glass around, with the glass touching the bottom the cookie sheet. This softens out any wonky edges of your cookie.

Other Mix-In Ideas

Although white chocolate chunks and dried cranberries are delicious, this cookie recipe is also a great base for any mix-in favorites or ideas you might want to stir in. Try any of these:

Pecans Walnuts Candied orange peel Dark chocolate chips Dried cherries M&Ms Peanuts

How to store and freeze cookie dough Make your dough mixture and then, before chilling or putting in the freezer, to make things easier on yourself, cookie dough scoop out all of the cookie balls and freeze them in that shape so you can just separate and bake when you are ready. These cookie balls will last in your freezer up to 3 months. You can keep them on a cookie tray or large baking sheet wrapped in plastic wrap, or in a freezer bag. How to store baked cookies Any way you slice it, cookies need to cool completely before you store them. The enemy here is condensation, and this will form if your cookie is warm and you put it in a bag. Imagine the cookie sweating. If storing in the fridge, place in an airtight container. Your cookies will keep for two weeks in the fridge. If stored in the freezer, they can last 8 to 12 months. That’s coming straight from the US Dept. of Agriculture. You could enjoy these cookies on this year’s holiday cookie trays and again next year. Read More: The Best Christmas Cookies – Quick and Easy Recipes