Cranberry Orange Cookies

You love the flavors in the quick bread and now enjoy the same cranberry orange flavor in a cookie!

Cranberry and orange are one of my favorite flavor combinations. It lends itself to a lot of dishes–sweet and savory. If you love the bread of the same flavor, you’ll flip for these cookies.

The basic batter can be used for any multitude of flavors and/or add-ins. That’s a real timesaver at holiday time. One basic batter, many different cookies. You can’t beat that.

And yes, they’re eggless.

The Secret Of Chewy

It’s not much of a secret once you know it! You can make any cookie chewy by doing just one thing: adding a teaspoon of cornstarch to every cup of flour called for. That’s it in a nutshell.

I like chewy cookies–always have–but especially now that my teeth are failing me. Crispy and dense is an accident waiting to happen (at least right now for me), so I love using this little trick with my cookies.

Since you can make any multitude of flavors just using this basic batter, anything you want to not have the chewy texture, merely leave the cornstarch out of the batter. It’ll work.

Better With Age

As if being delicious and easy wasn’t enough, these cookies get better as they sit.

Naturally, that’s because the essential oils in the orange zest need to mellow to get great flavor. So try very hard not to eat all of them the first day. That’s going to be hard, but trust me on this one. They’ll be better the day after. They’re also a good keeper as long as they’re stored air-tight. My best guess is they’ll last about a month stored that way. As I said, it’s a guess because I’ve never had these hanging around that long. In a couple of days, they’re usually solid gone!

The Recipe

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Chewy Cranberry Orange Cookies

Delicious and addictive cranberry orange cookies everyone will love

Prep Time20 minutes mins

Cook Time12 minutes mins

Course: cookies, Dessert, Snack

Cuisine: American

Keyword: cookies for Santa, cookies that store well, cranberries in cookies, soft chewy cookies with fruit

Servings: 12

Calories: 358kcal

Author: Judith Hannemann

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter softened
• 8 oz cream cheese softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3 tbs grated orange zest
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp corn starch
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 cups dried cranberries i.e. Craisins

US Customary - Metric

Instructions

• Preheat oven. To 350F/180C. Line a large cookie sheet with parchment
• Beat cream cheese, butter and sugars until smooth and creamy. Add the vanilla and orange zest, beat to combine.
• Mix the flour, salt, soda and corn starch and add to the cream cheese mixture, mixing until just combined. Do not overmix.
• Fold in the dried cranberries.
• Drop by heaping tablespoonful onto prepared sheets, spacing about 1-in/2.5cm apart.
• Bake for 10-12 minutes or until edges just begin to become golden brown. Leave on the sheets for about a minute, then transfer to a rack to cool completely.
• Makes about 18-24 cookies.

Notes

For UK readers--light brown sugar is light muscovado sugar in UK

Video

Nutrition

Serving: 2cookies | Calories: 358kcal | Carbohydrates: 56g | Protein: 3g | Fat: 15g | Saturated Fat: 9g | Cholesterol: 41mg | Sodium: 334mg | Potassium: 70mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 36g | Vitamin A: 496IU | Vitamin C: 2mg | Calcium: 35mg | Iron: 1mg

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