White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies Recipe
Our White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies are everything you want in a holiday treat—chewy in the center, with just the right amount of crunch on the bottom and a beautifully domed top that makes them as pretty as they are delicious. Each bite is the perfect balance of buttery sweetness from the white chocolate and a touch of tartness from the dried cranberries. They’re soft without being cakey, rich without being heavy, and have that nostalgic, home-baked texture that keeps you reaching for just one more.
We make our White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies with care, using non-bromated and unbleached flour and raw sugar for a warm, natural flavor, though you can easily swap in refined sugar if that’s what you have on hand. The dough comes together with a handful of simple, wholesome ingredients—no weird syrups, preservatives, or artificial additives. The white chocolate wafers melt into little pockets of creamy sweetness, while the dried cranberries add a festive pop of color and chewy texture that feels quintessentially “holiday.”
These White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies have become a beloved staple at our microbakery—customers can’t get enough of them! Whether you’re baking a batch to take to a holiday party, gifting them to friends and family, or just treating yourself with a cup of coffee, they never disappoint. Their perfect combination of texture, flavor, and handcrafted quality makes them the cookie everyone talks about long after the last crumb is gone.
Notes on Ingredients
Let’s talk about those two stars of the White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies: the dried cranberries and white chocolate wafers. If you’ve ever tried to find dried cranberries without sunflower oil, you know the struggle is real! Even the ones sweetened with apple juice almost always have a little oil added to keep them from sticking together. We get it—and we’ve made peace with it. Around here, we take a 90/10 approach: we aim to keep things about 90% clean, and the other 10% we just give to Jesus (hahaha). It’s all about balance and remembering that some food is meant to bring joy, not stress.
The white chocolate wafers can be just as tricky to source cleanly. A lot of brands sneak in extra stabilizers or artificial flavoring, but we do our best to find the highest-quality ones with real cocoa butter and minimal ingredients. That said, these White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies are a special holiday treat, not your everyday snack—so if you can’t find the perfect “clean” wafer, don’t sweat it. A small amount goes a long way in these cookies, and the joy they bring to a table full of friends and family is worth every sweet, creamy bite.
White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies
Equipment
- 1 1/2 Sheet Pan
- 1 Stand Mixer
- 1 Cookie Scoop
- 1 1/2 Sheet Parchment
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup Soft Butter
- 3/4 cup Raw Brown Sugar (or refined)
- 3/8 cup Raw White Sugar (or refined)
- 1 Egg
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1.25 tsp Baking Soda
- 1 tsp Cornstarch
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 3 cups Unbleached/Non-Bromated Flour
- 3/4 cup White Chocolate Wafers
- 3/4 cup Dried Cranberries
Instructions
- Creaming the butter and sugar: If you’re using a stand mixer, attach the paddle. If you’re mixing by hand, grab a sturdy spatula or wooden spoon. Add 3/4 cup softened butter, 3/4 cup brown sugar, and 3/8 cup white sugar to your bowl. Mix until the mixture is well-creamed and light in texture—I like to take it a little extra fluffy here for that perfectly domed cookie. Once creamed, add 1 egg and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, then continue mixing until everything is fully combined and the mixture is light and airy again.
- Gently stir in: Add 1¼ teaspoons baking soda, 1 teaspoon cornstarch, and ½ teaspoon salt to the bowl and mix just until combined. Then, very gently fold in 3 cups of all-purpose flour—do not overmix! Finally, add 3/4 cup white wafers and 3/4 cup dried cranberries and give the dough one last gentle stir. Overmixing at this stage can make the cookies tough, so stop as soon as everything looks evenly distributed.
- Options:Chill the dough in the bowl, then scoop and bake later.Scoop the dough now, refrigerate for at least 30 minutes (or longer), then bake.Scoop the dough now, freeze, and bake straight from frozen when you’re ready.We’ve found that freezing the dough gives the cookies incredible flavor development—but it’s totally optional. We like to scoop the dough while it’s still soft (it’s much easier to work with), freeze the scoops overnight, and then bake. That said, you can absolutely scoop the warm dough, chill it for 30 minutes, and bake right away. Chilling or freezing not only deepens the flavor but also helps the cookies hold their shape, preventing spreading and giving you that perfectly domed, bakery-style look.
- Bake: These cookies bake quickly, so keep an eye on them! We like to pull ours when they reach an internal temperature of about 170°F. Bake on a parchment-lined half sheet pan at 350°F for about 12 minutes. Once baked, let the cookies cool right on the pan for a few minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack. This helps them set up perfectly—soft and chewy in the center with that lovely slight crunch on the bottom.