This chocolate chip cranberry cookies recipe is very easy to make. It is also a delicious variation & upgrade from “boring” regular chocolate chip cookies. The sweet & slightly tart dried cranberries combine wonderfully with chocolate chips. We used semi-sweet chocolate chips for this recipe but it also works well with other types of chocolate chips (i.e. milk chocolate chips or white chocolate chips). Your family will love this fruity “twist” on chocolate chip cookies.
Delicious Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies
If you enjoyed this cookie recipe, we hope you will leave a comment below and give us a 5 star rating. Thank you in advance! We also have a printable and “pin-able” cookie recipe at the bottom of this page. For more great recipes (i.e. Butterscotch Chocolate Chip Cookies), please visit Bread Dad’s main Easy Cookie Recipes section.
Key Ingredients – Chocolate Chips & Dried Cranberries
Ingredients – Easy Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies Recipe
- 16 Tablespoons – Unsalted Butter (softened) – 230 grams
- 2 – Large Eggs
- 1 Cup – Brown Sugar (packed) – 215 grams
- 1/2 Cup – Granulated White Sugar – 100 grams
- 1 Teaspoon – Vanilla Extract – 5 milliliters
- 2 1/4 Cups – All Purpose Flour – 270 grams
- 1 Teaspoon – Baking Soda – 5 grams
- 1/2 Teaspoon – Salt – 3 grams
- 1 Cup – Chocolate Chips (semi-sweet) – 170 grams
- 1 Cup – Dried Cranberries – 114 grams
Servings – Roughly 24-30 cookies (amount depends on the size of the cookie that you create)
Equipment – Measuring cup & spoons, mixing bowl, long wooden spoon, electric mixer, tablespoon or cookie dough scoop, oven mitts, silicon spatula, baking sheets, cooling rack and an oven.
Instructions – Easy Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies Recipe
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
- Soften butter in a microwave. FYI – I like to semi-melt the butter for better “mixability”.
- Lightly beat the eggs.
- Mix eggs, butter, granulated white sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in a large bowl. Use an electric mixer to mix these ingredients together. Mix until creamy.
- Then stir in the flour, baking soda and salt. Use an electric mixer to mix all of the ingredients together. Mix until ingredients are completely blended and cookie dough looks creamy. FYI – Read the tips section below to find out why using an electric mixer results in a much better cookie than mixing by hand (when using vegetable oil). However, don’t overmix. Only mix for 1-2 minutes with an electric mixer.
- Add in the chocolate chips and dried cranberries. Stir into cookie dough with large spoon until chips & cranberries are evenly mixed throughout the dough.
- Optional (but recommended) – Chill the dough in a covered bowl in your refrigerator for 30-60 minutes. This helps to prevent the cookie dough from spreading in the oven and reduces the potential for overly thin/flat cookies.
- Scoop dough with a tablespoon or cookie dough scoop and place this dough “ball” onto a nonstick baking sheet. You will need at least 2 baking sheets in order to bake all of the cookies at the same time (if they can fit in your oven) or you will need to bake each batch separately (one after the other).
- Leave space of roughly 2-3 inches between each dough ball because the cookies will spread as they bake.
- Bake for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown.
- Remove baking tray from the oven. Wear oven mitts. Leave cookies on baking sheet to cool for 2-3 minutes. Otherwise, cookies might break when removed from pan.
- Use a spatula to remove cookies and place cookies on wire cooling racks in order to cool completely.
- Please read the tips section below for extra information on how to make this recipe successfully & to avoid common cookie problems.
If you liked this recipe, please leave a comment below & give us a 5 star rating. It is ALWAYS great to hear from someone who has enjoyed our recipes!!
Other Bread Dad Sections
- Cookie Tools – Cookie scoops, etc.
- Bread Machines – My favorites
- Bread Making Books
- Bread & Dessert Mixes
- Online Classes, Ingredients, etc.
Tips – Easy Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies Recipe
- The tips below are designed to help cookie “novices” and/or people with limited baking experience.
- Click on our “print recipe” link if you want to print out this recipe. It includes all of the recipe’s ingredients and instructions. However, the recipe print function does not include our tips section. Please read the tips section in order to avoid common recipe problems.
- This recipe is part of our series on Easy Cookie Recipes.
- Tips on how to avoid making HARD cookies – Do not use old baking soda (expired baking soda impacts the rise/fluffiness of the cookie), measure the ingredients correctly & don’t eyeball things (too much flour or too little liquid will result in drier & harder cookies), do not overmix the cookie dough (only mix the cookie dough for 1-2 minutes with an electric mixer), do not overbake the cookies (bake the cookies at the low end of the 8-10 minutes), use a portable oven thermometer to check if your oven temperature is off (some ovens run hotter than the temp set on the dial), do not remove the brown sugar (helps activate the baking soda & adds a little moisture), chill the dough (helps to retain the height of the cookie as flatter/spreading cookies bake faster & come out harder), do not make overly flat thin cookies (thin cookies bake quicker than expected), store freshly made cookies in airtight containers (after they have cooled down), etc.
- Optional – Please feel free to change the ratio of dried cranberries to chocolate chips (i.e. 1 1/4 cups of dried cranberries & 3/4 cups of chocolate chips). Just make sure the total amount of cranberries & chocolate chips equals 2 cups. For a more adult version of these cookies, you can have a greater ratio of dried cranberries. For kids, they might prefer a greater ratio of chocolate chips to dried cranberries.
- Optional – If you want “juicer” cookies, you can replace the dried cranberries with frozen cranberries. Frozen cranberries retain their shape better than fresh cranberries during the mixing and baking process (they don’t burst as much).
- Optional – If your family doesn’t like dried cranberries, you use other dried fruits such as raisins, dried blueberries, dried cherries, etc.
- Optional – If you want even sweeter cookies, you can replace the semi-sweet chocolate chips with milk chocolate chips or white chocolate chips.
- Cookies come out much better if you mix the ingredients with an electric mixer. The cookie dough comes out “creamier” and the ingredients are blended in better if you use an electric mixer.
- However, DO NOT overmix the cookie dough (don’t mix for more than 1-2 minutes) because this could result in problems such as cookies spreading too thin during baking and/or hard cookies.
- Completely mix the eggs, butter and sugar together with an electric mixer BEFORE adding the flour. This will result in much better cookies. See the inadequately blended problems in the line below.
- Mixing only by hand can lead to the cookie dough being inadequately blended. This can result in your cookies having unwanted “clumps” of ingredients (i.e. small flour clumps) and/or a gritty texture (inadequately blended sugar grains). Use an electric mixer for best results.
- However, do not use the electric mixer on the chocolate chips & cranberries… as this will just grind & chop them into tiny bits! Hand stir the chips & cranberries into the cookie dough with a large spoon.
- You can make the cookie dough balls (drops, spoonfuls, etc.) with 2 tablespoons, a cookie dough scoop or your hands. Some people also like to wear food grade plastic gloves when making cookie dough balls/drops.
- Use of a cookie dough scoop will give you more consistently shaped cookies versus varying sizes from using a less “exact” methods such as using a tablespoon or your hands.
- For “rounder” cookies (with no edges sticking out), you can use a cookie dough scoop or mold the cookie dough by hand into round balls and then press down on the dough ball until it turns into a pancake shape.
- For a more “natural” cookie shape, you can scoop the cookie dough with a tablespoon and place the cookie dough “drops” onto the baking sheet without shaping the dough. Your cookies will taste great and just have a few more natural edges and bumps.
- Optional – Once you have placed the cookie dough balls on the baking tray, you can press extra chips into the top of the dough balls if you want an even greater chocolate and/or cranberry “appearance”.
- Place the baking tray on the oven’s middle rack for best results. If the baking tray is placed too high or too low in the oven, the baking tray may be too close to the heating element.
- If you have a problem with a cookie recipe, please make sure that you are following the recipe exactly (i.e. using the correct oven temperature), using the correct amounts of ingredients (i.e. don’t eyeball the measurements versus using a measuring cup or accidentally add a tablespoon when a teaspoon is called for), using the correct ingredients (i.e. baking soda/powder versus yeast or all purpose flour versus bread flour), etc. Please don’t “wing” things with recipes.
- You should always try to use relatively fresh baking soda for the best results. For example, using baking soda from an open container (that has been deodorizing your refrigerator for months) may lead to subpar results. Old & hard baking soda/powder may lead to rising problems and/or leave small bitter clumps in your cookies.
- Some interesting cranberry facts… According to Wikipedia, the main producers of cranberries are “the United States, Canada, and Chile, which collectively accounted for 97% of the global total. Wisconsin (65% of US production) and Quebec were the two largest regional producers of cranberries in North America. Cranberries are also a major commercial crop in Massachusetts (23% of US production), New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington”. Didn’t realize that Wisconsin was such as big cranberry producer!! I would have guessed Maine… which is not even close.
- Historical Fact – According to Wikipedia, in 1938 “Ruth Wakefield invented the chocolate chip cookie. She added chopped up bits from a Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate bar into a cookie” and “Andrew Nestlé and Ruth Wakefield made a business arrangement: Wakefield gave Nestlé the right to use her cookie recipe and the Toll House name for one dollar and a lifetime supply of Nestlé chocolate”.
- FYI – Many chocolate chip cookie recipes are some type of variation of this original Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe. For more information, you should read the Wikipedia article on Chocolate Chip Cookies.
- If your family loves cranberry-based desserts & snacks, you should also try our recipes for Applesauce Cranberry Bread, Cranberry Bread with Fresh Cranberries, Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies and Pumpkin Cranberry Bread.
- My recipes are based on US ingredient measurements (i.e. US cups & tablespoons). However, as a courtesy to our European visitors, I have also included some very ROUGH European equivalents (i.e. grams & milliliters). Since I rarely use European measurements when baking, please let me know in the comment section below if any of the European ingredient measurements need to be changed (i.e. for XYZ ingredient, milliliters are more commonly used versus the grams information listed in the recipe).
- Always wear oven mitts/gloves when dealing with ovens, hot baking sheets, etc.
- For more cookie ideas (i.e. white chocolate chip, butterscotch or cranberry), please visit Bread Dad’s main Easy Cookie Recipes section.
If you liked this recipe, please leave a comment below & give us a 5 star rating. It is ALWAYS great to hear from someone who has enjoyed our recipes!!
Reference Sources
- Wikipedia, Chocolate
- Wikipedia, Cranberry
- Wikipedia, Dried Fruit
Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies Recipe
This chocolate chip cranberry cookies recipe is very easy to make. It is also a delicious variation & upgrade from "boring" regular chocolate chip cookies. The sweet & slightly tart dried cranberries combine wonderfully with chocolate chips. Visit BreadDad.com for more great recipes.
Servings: 30 Cookies
Calories: 180kcal
Ingredients
- 16 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter (softened)
- 2 Eggs (large)
- 1 Cup Brown Sugar (packed)
- 1/2 Cup Granulated White Sugar
- 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- 2 1/4 Cups Flour (all purpose flour)
- 1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1/2 Teaspoon Salt
- 1 Cup Chocolate Chips (semi-sweet)
- 1 Cup Dried Cranberries
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
- Soften butter in a microwave.
- Lightly beat eggs.
- Mix eggs, butter, granulated white sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in a large bowl. Use an electric mixer to mix these ingredients together. Mix until creamy.
- Then stir in the flour, baking soda and salt. Use an electric mixer to mix all of the ingredients together. Mix until ingredients are completely blended and cookie dough looks creamy. FYI - Read the tips section below to find out why using an electric mixer results in a much better cookie than mixing by hand.
- Add in the chocolate chips and dried cranberries. Stir into cookie dough with large spoon until chips & cranberries are evenly mixed throughout the dough.
- Optional (but recommended) – Chill the dough in a covered bowl in your refrigerator for 30-60 minutes. This helps to prevent the cookie dough from spreading in the oven and reduces the potential for overly thin/flat cookies.
- Scoop dough with a tablespoon or cookie dough scoop and place this dough “ball” onto a nonstick baking sheet. You will need at least 2 baking sheets in order to bake all of the cookies at the same time (if they can fit in your oven) or you will need to bake each batch separately (one after the other).
- Leave space of roughly 2-3 inches between each dough ball because the cookies will spread as they bake.
- Bake for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown.
- Remove baking tray from the oven. Wear oven mitts. Leave cookies on baking sheet to cool for 2-3 minutes. Otherwise, cookies might break when removed from pan.
- Use a spatula to remove cookies and place cookies on wire cooling racks in order to cool completely.
Notes
This is a Bread Dad recipe and may not be copied or reproduced. This recipe is copyright protected under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Legal Disclaimer
The nutritional information is provided using recipe widgets such as WP Recipe Maker. These figures should only be considered as an estimate. They should not be construed as a guarantee of accuracy given visitors may use different serving sizes, ingredients, etc. See our legal disclaimer for additional nutrition disclosures.
Nutrition
Serving: 1Cookie | Calories: 180kcal | Carbohydrates: 24g | Protein: 2g | Fat: 9g | Saturated Fat: 5g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.4g | Monounsaturated Fat: 2g | Cholesterol: 27mg | Sodium: 83mg | Potassium: 62mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 16g | Vitamin A: 205IU | Vitamin C: 0.01mg | Calcium: 15mg | Iron: 1mg
If you liked this recipe, please leave a comment below & give us a 5 star rating. Your comments help us to improve & clarify our recipe instructions. Moreover, it is ALWAYS great to hear from someone who has enjoyed our recipes!!!
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- Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Butterscotch Chocolate Chip Cookies
- No Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
- No Butter Oatmeal Cookies with Chocolate Chips & Cranberries
- No Egg Chocolate Chip Cookies
- White Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies
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