A festive colorful cookie for Christmas cookie plates, quick to make, easy to enjoy. The recipe uses less-expensive fresh cranberries, orange essence and pecans.
Many of us are celebrating Christmas frugally this year. We are “making the list, checking it twice” to save a few dollars here, more dollars there.
So a favorite food magazine’s frugal (ahem) entertaining ideas caught my attention. Granted, the article was titled ‘Luxury for Less’ – but still, it suggested we substitute American caviar for Russian beluga and truffle oil for scrapings of fresh truffles. “We get it,” the story opened. And they do, if luxury is a necessity. But luxury is luxury – and luxury not a necessity.
Me, I’m baking less this year, an accommodation to fewer cookie monsters within cookie-grabbing distance, and with less-expensive ingredients, in nod to life-strapped budgets.
But baking at all? It’s a luxury.
It’s a luxury to collect fresh cranberries and butter and sugar in my warm kitchen as Christmas carols waft in from the other room. It’s a luxury to put out cups of tea and a plate of fresh cookies and have loved ones reach out to enjoy them.
I feel rich beyond words.
This recipe goes way-way back to cookie swaps hosted by my dear friend Lisa (who much to my delight, now has the great blog My Own Sweet Thyme!) when we both lived in Dallas. I haven’t made the recipe in years but was attracted to the easy ingredient list, the use of less-expensive fresh cranberries versus dried cranberries, getting 5 dozen cookies from a single stick of butter – and most especially, the festive color! It’s going to be my contribution to my own cookie swap on Saturday.
So many Christmas cookie recipes seem to require chilling the dough before rolling or baking. This one – yahoo, another hat-tip to simplicity – actually works better if the cookies are baked immediately after mixing the dough. If the dough rests, the cranberry begins to stain the dough, resulting in a slightly muddy color, although no change in flavor.
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Time to table: 90 minutes
Makes 5 dozen cookies two- to three-bites big
- 1/2 cup butter, softened to room temperature
- 1 cup (200g) sugar
- 3/4 cup (165g) brown sugar
- 1/4 cup milk (see TIPS)
- 2 tablespoons frozen orange juice concentrate (see TIPS)
- 1 large egg
- 3 cups all-purpose flour, fluffed to aerate before measuring or 375g
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon table salt (skip the salt if using salted butter)
- 4 ounces (about 1 cup) pecans, preferably toasted, or black walnuts, coarsely chopped
- 6 ounces fresh or frozen cranberries, coarsely chopped in a food processor
Preheat oven to 375F.
In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugars with an electric mixer. Beat in milk, orange juice concentrate and egg. Separately, stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt, then blend well into the butter mixture. With a wooden spoon, stir in the pecans and cranberries.
Using two spoons, one to scoop and one to scrape, drop dough onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment or a silicone mat (see TIPS). (For less rustic, slightly neater cookies, you can also roll the dough into balls though it is quite sticky. For very neat cookies, use a cookie scoop.) Bake for about 15 minutes for light-colored cake-like cookies, slightly longer for golden chewy cookies. Let cool for 5 minutes, remove from sheet to continue cooling.
The original recipe called for two tablespoons of orange juice but using the concentrate bumps up the orange essence considerably. Once I added the zest of an orange. This added to the orange-ness but is optional, for sure. The original recipe suggested greasing the cookie sheets. The dough’s sugar content is quite high so something underneath is a good idea. I tested with parchment, a silicone mat and a good-quality non-stick baking sheet; all worked fine.
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FYI ~ You might try "fluffing to aerate before measuring" trick, it results in about 25% less flour (by weight). I do not recommend using less flour with the recipe, not if the technique is followed.
I believe that three cups IS the right amount. I can't put my hands on the original recipe but I checked with my friend Lisa, who made them right after I posted this (her link is in the story and in a comment as well) and she is certain she used 3 cups as well.
But then again, I note that another reader had an issue with dryness with a similar recipe from a Betty Crocker cookbook so something does seem to be going on. I hope to make these tomorrow to check the recipe. Other things CAN make a difference but I'd like to get to the bottom of this.
My website is 90% long-time, made-many-times recipes. This cookie I've made just once that I remember but the recipe came from a friend who shared them at a cookie swap and of course, again, my friend Lisa.
Thanks for letting me know so that I can work it out. I remember getting so frustrated with a cookie calling for macadamia nuts from Cooking Light. I figured out the problem and even wrote Cooking Light but the recipe was never corrected. It's here, if you want a another good cranberry cookie recipe, Cranberry Mac Morsels.
In fact, these were my very favorite cookies this Christmas!
Like the above commenter, three cups of flour seemed a bit much when I first added it, but after a minute my hand mixer incorporated it and the dough was the perfect consistency to scoop out. I did measure the flour by weight, though, as I'm too impatient to do the scoop and level method. Thanks for including the metric measurements!
FYI I'm working on another recipe that calls for fresh cranberries, hard to imagine but I like it even better than these cookies! I think it's the combination of sweet and tart.
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