Garden Cook - Cranberries: White chocolate and cranberry cookies

White chocolate and cranberry cookies
Originally uploaded by Cakelaw

The theme for this month's Garden Cook blogging event, hosted by Paulchen's Foodblog, is Cranberries.

There are so many great recipes featuring cranberries that I had a hard time choosing which one to make this time around. I settled on a recipe for White Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies by Bill Granger (of Bill's Restaurant, Sydney and some fun Macleans toothpaste ads here in Australia) published in The Sydney Morning Herald on 17 October 2006.

I liked the sweetness of the cranberries and white chocolate chunks against the earthiness of the oats and brown sugar in these cookies. The recipe is as follows:

150g softened butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 lightly beaten egg

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

1 cup plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

pinch of salt

2 cups rolled oats

1 cup white chocolate chunks

2/3 cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Cream the butter and sugar, then add the egg and vanilla and beat until smooth. Fold in the sifted flour, baking powder and salt, then finally, add the chocolate, oats and cranberries and stir until combined.

Roll teaspoonfuls of mixture into balls and place on greased and lined baking trays, then flatten with a fork. Bake for 15 minutes or until a pale gold. Cool on the trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

These cookies don't spread much during baking, so it is important to flatten them to the desired thickness before baking. Otherwise, these cookies were really easy to make, and would be delicious with a cup of tea or coffee for a morning or afternoon tea treat.

Thanks to Paulchen for hosting this month's Garden Cook event!

Postscript: The roundup can be found here.