You can thank me later for introducing you to these scrumptious cranberry cookies with white chocolate and pecans!
“Those are the best cookies I’ve ever had in my life,” said The Hubs.
The man has eaten a lot of cookies. He is cultured in all things cookie. Listen to him.
In the past, I have made white chocolate cranberry macadamia nut cookies, which are also delicious. However, this time, as the girls and I prepared for another round of Kids’ Kitchen – our collaboration with other bloggers and their kiddos – I found myself without macadamia nuts. Cranberry pecan cookies it was.
Quite frankly, I’m really happy with how these cranberry pecan cookies turned out. No offense to the macadamia, but we just tend to keep pecans on hand in our house. They are easy and workable for a myriad of recipes. And, although all nuts are pricey these days, the macadamia nuts seem especially pricey. Therefore, pecans seem perfect for these cranberry nut cookies.
I basically used the same recipe I developed for my chocolate pecan cherry cookies.
For this blog post, we made our white chocolate cookies after bath time which is why the girls have wet hair in these pictures. It took a bit for Scooter Britches to understand that we weren’t cutting out cookies with cookie cutters this time. She said she was going to use “the star, the flower, the Santa Claus, the Mickey.”
Once she understood chocolate was involved, she was all good, although the concept of white chocolate seemed to blow her mind!
Making Cranberry Cookies with Kids
As usual, SB enjoyed adding ingredients to the mixer. I kind of let her figure out her own system – despite the mess that was made! But I just couldn’t completely turn over the wheel when it came to the flour. Helicopter momming at its finest when it came to adding the flour. And same with the eggs…because eggs.
It took her a while to get her hand-motor coordination in step enough to work the cookie scoop since it involves squeezing and letting go of the handle at a precise moment to drop the cookie. She was able to get quite a few on the sheet, but the cookies were of varying sizes so I went back later and evened out the balls of dough. As with all of my cookie recipes, I prefer to use a medium cookie scoop as you see pictured below. The cookies still tend to be on the smaller size, but I think that is fine since I am often taking cookies to my work or my husband’s work. A batch of smaller cookies stretches for a larger crowd of people.
Twelve minutes in the oven brought the crispy edges I enjoy in a cookie. If you prefer softer cookies, I would suggest baking these white chocolate cranberry beauties around 10 minutes instead.
White Chocolate Cranberry Pecan Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup Unsalted butter softened
- 1/2 cup White sugar
- 3/4 cup Brown sugar
- 2 Eggs
- 1 tsp Vanilla
- 2 1/2 cups All-purpose flour
- 1 tsp Baking soda
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 1 cup Pecans chopped
- 1 1/2 cups White chocolate chips
- 1 cup Dried cranberries
- 1 tsp Sea salt fine; (optional, for dusting on top(
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- In a large mixing bowl, cream softened butter and both sugars until smooth.
- Beat in the eggs, one at a time.
- Mix in the vanilla extract.
- In a small bowl, combine the flour, the baking soda, and the salt.
- Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture.
- Next, add the white chocolate chips, the nuts, and the cranberries.
- Using a medium cookie scoop (overfilled a bit), drop cookies onto ungreased cookie sheet. (Leave 1-2 inches of space around each cookie.)
- Bake for 12-14 minutes or until bottoms start to brown. Watch closely so as not to burn them.
- Dust with a bit of sea salt when brought from the oven. (Optional)
- Cool on baking pans for 2-3 minutes before moving to wire racks to cool completely.
Notes
Nutrition
Be sure to check out some of our other favorite cookies – like our white chocolate chip and almond oatmeal cookies or our coconut pecan praline no bake cookies.
Check out the other yummy treats in this month’s Kids’ Kitchen Blog Hop:
Kids’ Kitchen: Best Gingerbread Cookies | Sugar, Spice & Glitter
Chocolate Spice Cookies | Royal Little Lambs
How to Make Fluffy and Tasty Coconut Whipped Cream | Living Montessori Now
Al
Love, love, love these! Did I say I love them? Delicious!