Happy Holidays readers! I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday season and is ready to celebrate the New Year! I, for one, had a fantastic holiday. We hosted brunch this year, as we have the last 2 years since Ro was born. It’s just easier to keep her home and have our families come to us. I also love entertaining, we don’t have a lot of space but we try to make it work!

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Every year I feel like my cheese board gets more and more elaborate. I actually ran out of room on this one and considered having a second board. I opted to hoard the Brie and Apricot preserves for myself…as a new years eve appetizer.

The smoked salmon platter was also a big hit. Thanks for the inspo Pinterest! I made 3 kinds of quiche, including the popular Spinach, Mushroom, Bacon and Swiss Quiche, and breakfast potatoes. Along with all of this, we needed something sweet! So I made a Challah bread french toast bake topped with cinnamon sugar and fresh blueberries.

There was plenty of coffee, wine, and blackberry mimosas. I made a blackberry simple syrup the night before by bringing 1cup water, 1 cup sugar and 1 pint of blackberries to a boil and then simmered for 20 minutes. Strained and stored overnight. In the morning I rimmed champagne flutes with sugar and in went the prosecco, blackberry syrup, a fresh berry and rosemary for garnish. It was a fun-filled day that I am still recovering from. I had this week off between Christmas and New Years and I have done nearly nothing, as intended.

I had planned on posting these cookies before Christmas, in case any readers wanted to make them for the holiday. But the holiday season as Mom/Santa got the best of me and I just couldn’t find a minute to sit down and write it up. I figure, if you have any New Years Eve parties to go to these would also be a festive and welcome hit! Or you can just make them for yourself, because who doesn’t like cookies? Cranberries and white chocolate? It’s practically like vegetables.

The key ingredient here is cornstarch. It keeps them soft which I will be using ALL THE TIME. I love soft cookies.

What I also discovered when gathering ingredients for this recipe is they make dried cranberries infused with different berry juices now. So I ended up using cherry infused dried cranberries after Brett asked for these blondies to be made when cherries are out of season.

I should also warn you that these cookies do require refrigerating the dough. 2 hours is preferred, but if you are like me and don’t plan ahead well enough, 1 hour in the freezer does it. 😉

 

Soft Baked White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

Yield about 2 dozen

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened.
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tsp cornstarch
• 1 tsp salt
• 3/4 – 1 cup white chocolate chips
• 3/4 – 1 cup dried cranberries

In a large bowl (or stand mixer with paddle attachment) beat butter for 1 minute until smooth. Add brown and white sugar and mix until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla.

In a separate bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, and cornstarch. On low speed, slowly mix the dry ingredients into the wet ones. Add chocolate chips and cranberries until just combined. I sometimes just fold them in with a spatula outside my stand mixer. Cover dough with foil or parchment paper and chill for about 2 hours.

After chilling, let cookie dough sit at room temperature for about 10-20 minutes and preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Using a spoon (or hands) you can break off pieces of the cookie dough to form balls (about 1 tablespoon each). The dough will be a little crumbly but the warmth from your hands when rolling them into balls will firm them back together. Place 10-12 balls on parchment lined baking sheets evenly apart and bake for 8-10 minutes until the edges are barely golden brown. Allow to cool on the sheet for 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack.