Cranberry Orange Shortbread Cookies

Welcome to the 12 Days of Christmas Treats!  The incredible Juliet at A Loverly Life and I are sharing our very favorite Christmas treats over the next 12 days.  Join us as we try each other’s recipes and enjoy some special extra treats this season!  I’m starting with these cranberry orange shortbread cookies!

Every year around Thanksgiving, I buy a bag of fresh cranberries.  I have this vision of creating some incredible dish with cranberries that everyone finds incredible.  And every year, the soggy unused cranberries go into the trash.  Not this year!  Here is a recipe I found for cranberry orange shortbread cookies.  It’s a keeper with only 5 ingredients!  The full recipe is below.

Chop the Cranberries

I always use a stand mixer for making cookies.  But this recipe uses a food processor.  So I figured, why not??  I have a very small food processor so I made my dough in two equal batches.

Wash the cranberries and chop them in the food processor by pulsing until they war coarsely chopped.  You can chop them more finely if you like.  Set them aside.

Cream the Butter

Add the butter, the sugar and zest from the orange and let the processor run until the contents are creamed and the orange zest is mixed evenly into the batch.

Next, add the chopped cranberries and pulse until they were all mixed into the creamy batch.  I removed 1/2 of the mixture and set it aside (only because my food processor is tiny and could not handle the entire batch). 

Add the Flour

I added 1/2 of the flour to the remaining batch in the food processor and pulsed until it was mixed.  I removed that 1/2 and set it aside.  I repeated the process with the other 1/2 of the flour and creamy batch.  I usually bake the simple chocolate chip cookies so the colors and fragrance of these fruits were quite refreshing.  At this point I couldn’t wait to taste these cranberry orange cookies!

Combine both batches on a lightly floured wooden cutting board and mixed them together by hand.  Sprinkle more flour on the board as needed to keep the dough from sticking to the board and to my hands.  Roll the dough into a log.  This log was quite long so I cut it in half thus making 2 logs of cranberry orange cookie dough that were each easier to handle.

Chill the Dough

Wrap each log in plastic wrap, tightly sealing it.  Then wrap each tightly in aluminum foil and place into a zip lock bag.  Set the logs in the refrigerator to chill for 3 hours. 

Oven Time

After 3 hours, I removed one of the logs.  I figured this was my practice log.  I would save the other for later.  I cut the log in half.  One half I sliced into 1/4 inch slices.  The other I sliced into 1/3″ slices.  The thinner baked at 350 degrees for 12 minutes.  The thicker baked at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.  

Both were delicious.  I could taste the tartness of the cranberries along with the citrus flavor from the orange zest.  The cookies were not super sweet which was a relief.

For the next batch, I will make the log thicker.  This one was about 1.5″ – o 2″ in diameter.  I think a bigger cookie would be more suitable.  Had I made the log thicker, it would not have been so long and hard to handle.  Duh!  

Below is the recipe card for Cranberry Orange Shortbread Cookies.  Be sure to visit Juliet at A Loverly Life tomorrow for her recipe.  And hop back here on Wednesday for Day 3!