Recipe: Vegan Orange Cranberry White Chocolate Cookies
As a pastry chef who likes to work with seasonal ingredients, winter baking can be a little tricky sometimes. Enter two of my favorite winter fruits- cranberries and oranges! On particularly cold winter days, I highly recommend putting on your favorite winter black metal album (might I suggest Immortal’s “At The Heart of Winter”?) and baking a batch of cookies. Link below the recipe for accompanying cookie jams.
This recipe yields about 12 cookies and takes about 45 minutes, start to finish.
Ingredients:
1 stick or 1/2 cup vegan butter, room temperature
3/4 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
zest and juice of one orange
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup vegan white chocolate chips (I recommend Pascha Chocolate!)
In a large mixing bowl, combine your butter and sugar. Either with a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment or a hand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until there are no clumps of either and the mixture is fluffy. You can also use one of those large wooden spoons to mix by hand, although it may take a little longer for the mixing steps (but you’ll get a good arm workout in!)
Next, add the applesauce, vanilla extract, orange zest and juice and mix until incorporated, scraping the sides of the bowl as needed so no ingredients get left out.
Add the flour, salt, baking soda, cranberries and white chocolate chips and mix until a stiff dough forms and there are no remaining clumps of unmixed butter or flour.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Using a 1/4 cup measure or an ice cream scoop, scoop the cookies on the prepared tray. Lightly press down on each scooped cookie, so that they look like thick hamburger patties.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and freeze the scooped cookies while your oven preheats (this will prevent the cookies from spreading too much while baking.
Place in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, rotating your tray 180 degrees halfway through baking.
Enjoy and stay warm!