Soft Oatmeal White Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies

Ingredients

See recipe card for exact amounts. 

Ingredient Notes

Simple pantry ingredients, with the addition of white chocolate chips and craisins, are used to make easy and delicious cookies. 

Flour – all purpose flour works great because we add a leavening agent.

Oats – we like rolled oats in this recipe, they are also called old fashioned oats. You can use quick oats if you don’t have rolled oats in a pinch but it will change the texture of the cookies. 

Dried Cranberries – they are also known as craisins. I have not tried these cookies with fresh cranberries, they will not turn out the same using fresh cranberries because they have much more water. 

White Chocolate Chips – these pair perfectly with cranberries. 

Brown Sugar – light brown sugar works great here. 

White Sugar – regular granulated sugar is perfect in this recipe.

Butter – we like real unsalted butter because we add salt to this oatmeal cookie recipe.

Eggs – large eggs are what we use because that is what we keep on hand. 

Baking Soda – this is used as a leavening agent to make our cookies rise and give them a perfect texture.

Vanilla – pure vanilla extract and not imitation vanilla. 

Salt – regular table salt.

How to Make White Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

1. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 350°.
2. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl and whisk until combined. 
3. In a large mixing bowl with a hand mixer, or in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together and mix until light and fluffy scraping down the sides of the bowl a couple of times. Add eggs and vanilla and continue to beat until mixed.
4. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix until well combined. 
5. Add the oats, white chocolate chips and dried cranberries mixing by hand until well combined. 
6. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for about 30 minutes.
7. Using a large cookie scoop drop dough onto cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. Roll into balls and flatten slightly (not too much). 
8. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the edges begin to turn golden brown. 
9. Allow to cool on the pan for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before storing. 

Alternative Methods

There was a time when I was first married that I did’t have an electric mixer, or cooling racks, or could afford parchment paper (really!) but I didn’t let that stop me from baking cookies. While it is nice to have all of these things you can still bake delicious cookies without them. 

• Don’t have an electric mixer? No problem, mix everything by hand. 
• Spray cookie sheets with non stick spray or smear butter or shortening over them with a paper towel if you don’t have parchment paper. 
• Let cookies cool on the counter or a plate if you don’t have a wire cooling rack. 

Tips

• Use room temperature eggs and butter for the best cookies because the ingredients will mix together better if they aren’t cold. For this particular cookie recipe we like to firm the butter back up a bit by refrigerating the cookie dough for a little bit so the dough doesn’t spread too much while baking.
• When using an electric mixer start on low speed and gradually increase to medium speed then high speed.
• A large cookie scoop holds about 2 tablespoons of dough and will make about 1 1/2 inch cookie dough balls. 
• Separate dried cranberries and cut the larger pieces in half.
• Bake cookies on the rack that is the closest to the center of the oven and bake in batches. I can fit two cookie sheets on one rack of my oven so I only bake 2 trays at a time. The oven I had before this one was smaller and I was only able to bake one cookie sheet at a time. 
• Want your cookies to look as pretty as these? All you have to do is save some of the chocolate chips and craisins to push down slightly into the unbaked cookies before you put them into the oven.  Or use extra ones because you can’t really have too many, can you?! 😉

Storage

Store cookies in an airtight container for up to 3 days. We usually use a zip top freezer bag. 

Just like any home baked cookie, white chocolate oatmeal cookies are better the first day or two and then start to dry out after that. 

More delicious cookie recipes

These cookies are great any day of the year but would also be the perfect addition to your holiday cookie platter.

Mexican Cinnamon Sugar Cookies

Toffee Snickerdoodles

Glazed Sour Cream Cookies

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

White Chocolate Chip Craisin Cookies (these don’t have oats)