Great Recipe for Cranberry Orange Cookies
If you liked the chocolate chip cookie recipe, you will love this one as well. This recipe requires a little more time and patience, just like the other recipe, but as Alton Brown from the Food Network always says, “Your efforts/patience will be rewarded.” The base for the cookie dough is the same, but this is a great variation on a theme of good cookies. I tinkered with this recipe because my husband loves cranberry orange scones and normally does not eat chocolate chip cookies. So, I tried to replicate a common combination of flavors and put it in cookie form.
General Information:
The overall preparation time for these cookies is 14-15 minutes. This recipe makes approximately 28 cookies if you use a rounded teaspoon (can fit 8 cookies per baking sheet). You will get about 18-20 cookies with a rounded tablespoon (6 cookies per baking sheet)
Ingredients:
- 14 tablespoons unsalted butter
- ½ cup white sugar
- ¾ cup brown sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla or almond extract
- 1 tsp orange extract
- 1 whole egg + 1 egg yolk
- 1 ¾ cups flour
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 2 or 3 dashes of ground cinnamon
- 1 ¼ cup craisins
Directions:
1. Melt the butter in a microwave safe measuring cup.
2. In a large bowl whisk together white and brown sugars, salt, vanilla/almond and orange extracts, and eggs.
3. Let the dough stand for three minutes and repeat two times
4. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
5. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
6. Add flour, baking soda, ground cinnamon, and craisins to the wet mixture.
7. Stir to combine evenly.
8. Using two teaspoons, round off batter so you have three evenly spaced mounds towards the top of the sheet and three towards the bottom. If you use teaspoons and not tablespoons, you can fit two extra cookies on the sheet between the rows. (Spacing is crucial because they cookies do spread a lot).
9.
Bake for 11-14 minutes. Check in at about 12 minutes whether you are baking one or two sheets at a time or 6 or 8 on a sheet.
10. Let the cookies cool for about two minutes.
11. Transfer the cooled cookies to a paper towel lined plate.
More Pictures:
To see more pictures of the preparation and baking process, please see my recipe for chocolate chip cookies.
Tips:
- Orange extract is powerful stuff, so do not overdo it or else you will mask the other flavors.
- Using vanilla extract I find balances out the power of the orange nicely.
- However, I do find that almond naturally compliments the cranberry orange flavor.
- This dough tends to be a little more loose than the one for chocolate chip cookies. I am not sure why, but I am suspicious that the orange extract is the culprit. Don't ask me why.
- For more tips and changes I made to the original recipe, please see my hub on making chocolate chip cookies.
