White Chocolate Cranberry Orange Oatmeal Cookies

The Monkey has been on a cookie-making tear for several months now. There is a satisfying simplicity to making cookies: they don’t take long to put together, the kitchen smells really good while they’re baking and they’re always a nice treat, whether at morning, noon or night.
After many recipes and adaptations, I think this is it – the perfect balance of sweet, salty and just plain tasty. I’ve always had a soft spot for cranberry-orange, and the white chocolate adds just enough of a sweet note (accordingly, the sugar content is somewhat lower than most similar recipes). The texture is maybe a bit softer than many oatmeal cookies – almost cake-like. And since they’re oatmeal cookies, they’re positively good for you, right? What’s not to like?

Ingredients
1 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup sugar (I use a ~50:50 mixture of white and brown)
4oz butter
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 tsp orange zest
2 tbsp fresh orange juice
1 cup oats (not the instant kind)
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup white chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375 ºF/190 ºC. Mix the flour, cinnamon, salt and baking soda in a bowl and set aside. Soften the butter (I zap it for 5-10sec in the microwave) and cream together with the sugar until light in texture. (I use a stand mixer, but a hand mixer should work too). Lightly beat the egg together with the vanilla essence and gradually add to the butter/sugar while continuing to mix. When it’s incorporated, add the orange juice and zest.
Next, add in the flour ~1/4 cup at a time, mixing everything together. When you have a smooth but sticky dough, fold in the oats, cranberries and chocolate chips. Scoop put balls onto a nonstick cookie sheet (you’ll probably need 2 sheets). The balls can be as big or as little as you like, but I make them with about 1 rounded tablespoon; this yields about 20 cookies overall.
Bake for 12 minutes; if you use 2 cookie sheets one above the other, swap the sheets around after 8 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack, leave to cool and store in an airtight container. Enjoy!

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