Name: Cranberry Orange Cookies
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 20 min
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; ½ cup butter (softened to room temperature); 1 3.4 oz vanilla pudding mix; 1 egg; 1 tsp vanilla extract; 1 tsp orange extract; ⅓ cup sour cream (or plain/vanilla Greek yogurt); ½ tsp salt; ½ tsp baking soda; 2 cups flour; 1-2 tsp orange zest (I just use the zest from one large orange); 2 cups fresh cranberries (chopped); ¼ cup orange juice (optional); 2-4 Tbsp sugar (optional)

Cranberry Orange Cookies are soft, chewy and packed with citrus orange flavor and fresh cranberries. These cranberry cookies are a fantastic and tasty treat for the Fall season!

The pudding mix in this cranberry orange cookie recipe creates the most amazing texture and the flavor combination makes each bite absolutely amazing. Make these orange cookies for your next holiday cookie exchange, they are sure to be a big hit.

Cranberry Orange Cookies are soft, chewy and packed with orange flavor and fresh cranberries. The perfect cookie recipe for fall!

What are Cranberry Orange cookies?

I’ve always loved the cranberry/orange flavor combination, even though I am not normally a fan of cranberries. I love Cranberry Orange bread but just recently decided to make a recipe for cookies with the same flavors. And now I am wondering why I didn’t come up with this earlier! I made several cookie recipes last week and these emerged as the favorite for everyone that tried them, they really are so delicious. These cranberry and orange cookies are made with a vanilla pudding mix, orange extract, orange zest and chopped fresh cranberries. You could also use dried cranberries (Craisins) if you prefer those. Fresh cranberries tend to be pretty tart, so I chose to sweeten them up by soaking them in orange juice and sugar before adding them to the cookie dough. The results are simply amazing!

Cranberry Orange cookies made with orange extract and fresh cranberries

HOW TO MAKE THE BEST ORANGE COOKIES:

After trying out multiple cookie recipes over many years, I have picked up several important tips for making the absolute BEST Cranberry Orange Cookies!

Preheat the oven. This will help your cookies turn out right every time!
Make sure that you have enough flour in the dough. If the dough is too sticky, you may need to add a little bit of flour.
Spend a little extra time when you mix the butter and sugars. Creaming them together for 2-3 minutes will improve the consistency of your cookies.
Use a cookie scoop! If you want all your cookies to be perfectly shaped and have them all be the same size, a cookie scoop is the way to go.
Use parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Doing this will make it really easy to remove the cookies from your cookie sheet so that you don’t have to scrape them off the pan, they will just slide right off in perfect shape.
Don’t over bake the cookies. When I take mine out of the oven, they still look slightly under baked but they will continue to bake on the cookie sheet for a couple more minutes so that’s ok.

Ingredients in Cranberry Orange cookies

Sugar: You need 1 cup of sugar for this cookie dough.

Butter: Add in 1 stick (1/2 cup) of butter, softened, to make the cookies nice and rich tasting.

Vanilla pudding mix: Use one 3-ounce box of instant vanilla pudding in the recipe to help make the cookies super soft, plus the pudding adds so much flavor too.

Egg: Adding in 1 large egg will bind all of the ingredients together well.

Vanilla extract: You need 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract to enhance all the wonderful flavors in this cookie recipe. The higher the quality of the vanilla, the better.

Orange extract: Orange extract is very strong so you only need 1 teaspoon to add a ton of flavor to the cookie dough.

Sour cream: To create thick, soft cookies, add in 1/3 cup of sour cream. You can also use plain or vanilla Greek yogurt if you’d like.

Salt: Just 1/2 teaspoon of salt will help balance out the other flavors in these cookies.

Baking soda: Use 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda to help the cookies rise as they bake. Be sure your baking soda isn’t old or expired or it will affect the outcome of the cookies.

Flour: You need 2 cups of all purpose flour for the base and structure of this tasty treats.

Orange zest: If desired, add in 1-2 teaspoons of orange zest to the dough. You can leave this out because the orange extract provides so much flavor, but I love the extra intensity of taste that comes from the zest. Plus, it adds little orange specks in the cookies that are beautiful!

Cranberries: You will need 2 cups of chopped fresh cranberries. You can chop these up as small as you’d like, I prefer them chopped very small, but it’s totally up to you.

Orange juice (optional): Soaking the chopped cranberries in a 1/4 cup of orange juice helps to soften and sweeten them up. The orange juice does NOT go into the cookie dough.

Sugar (optional): This is totally optional, but I also like to add a little bit of sugar to the cranberries so that they aren’t quite so tart. You can add anywhere between 2-4 tablespoons of sugar to the cranberries and orange juice.

How to make Cranberry Orange cookies

Prep

Begin by preheating the oven to 375° F. Then, line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicon mat.

Next, chop up the cranberries in small pieces and place them in a bowl. If you don’t want to sweeten them, you can add them to the batter just like that. If you want to sweeten them a bit, add the orange juice and 2-4 tablespoons of sugar to the chopped cranberries and mix. Set them aside while preparing the cookie dough.

Dough

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the sugar and butter, mixing well for 2-3 minutes. Then, add the dry pudding mix and beat the mixture for 1 more minute. You can use an electric mixer to make these steps easier.

After that, add in the egg, vanilla extract and orange extract and continue to mix for 2 more minutes. Now, add the sour cream and mix just until combined.

In a separate small bowl, combine the salt, baking soda and the flour, whisk to combine. Proceed to add the dry mixture to the butter mixture and stir until smooth.

Fold in the chopped cranberries and orange zest with a wooden spoon.

Bake

Using a cookie scoop, scoop out tablespoonfuls of the dough and place them about 2 inches apart on the prepared cookie sheet. Place in the preheated oven and bake for 10 minutes. Let the cookies cool on the sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Serve and enjoy!

CAN YOU FREEZE ORANGE CRANBERRY COOKIES?

Absolutely! You can keep your cookies frozen for up to 6 months in the freezer. Make sure to keep them stored in an airtight container to keep them fresh. You can also freeze them flat on a baking sheet before putting them in that container to keep them from sticking to each other as they freeze. This makes it a lot easier to grab one at a time when you want a snack.

HOW DO YOU SOFTEN BUTTER TO ROOM TEMPERATURE?

The best way to soften butter is to set it out for a few hours before you make your cookies. Since most of us (or maybe just me!) aren’t that prepared or don’t think that far in advance, there are a few tricks to softening butter perfectly in just a matter of minutes.

My favorite way to soften butter is in the microwave. It’s definitely fast, but you do have to be very careful not to melt it. Just put the whole stick of butter in the microwave (as long as it isn’t wrapped in foil!) and microwave for about 6-7 seconds. If the butter is still really cold, try another 5-7 seconds and check it again. You may need a few intervals, and if the butter is starting to feel soft, you can shorten the final interval to just a few seconds to make sure it doesn’t start melting.

I actually prefer to use the defrost setting on my microwave – I don’t know exactly what that mode does differently, and it takes a little bit longer (closer to 30 seconds), but it seems to be easier to get the butter to soften without melting.

Orange flavored cookies with chopped cranberries

HOW DO I ZEST AN ORANGE WITHOUT A ZESTER?

If you don’t have a zester already, you can often find that your cheese grater has a small section for zesting. You can use this or you can DIY if that still isn’t an option for you.

To DIY this, take an orange and a vegetable peeler. Peel off the outermost layer of the orange and get a long strip of peel. Lay it flat on a cutting board and mince it up as good as possible with a sharp knife. You want to avoid most of the white pithy layer because it’s bitter, but it won’t hurt to have a little in this dish, so don’t stress too hard about it.

WHY DO MY COOKIES BURN ON THE BOTTOM BUT AREN’T DONE IN THE MIDDLE?

If your cookies are always burning on the bottom, it is probably a cookie sheet issue! If you are using really dark cookie sheets, the bottoms of your baked goods will tend to burn before they are actually cooked all the way through. If you use a lot of cooking spray, the same result can happen. I prefer to use lighter colored non-stick pans so that I don’t have to use cooking spray at all. As mentioned above, I have been converted to silicone baking mats over the last couple of years and I love how easy it is for cookies to come off the tray – no sticking ever!

TRY OUT MORE OF OUR OTHER FAVORITE PUDDING COOKIES:

Cranberry Orange Cookies are delicate, moist and loaded with fresh orange flavor and cranberry bits. These cranberry cookies are a wonderful treat for the Fall season!

I’ve been a mom for 16 years now and still don’t feel like I know what I’m doing a great majority of the time. But every once in a while, I feel like I have an idea that is pretty brilliant. My kids have a checklist of a few things that they have to complete every day (clean room, daily job, etc) and a couple of months ago, I decided to add another column to the chart. This last column says, “Read to B” and they have to read my 2 year old at least one book to get their checkmark for the day.

I spent a lot of time reading with all of my other kids and they all learned to read really early as a result – reading is something I am super passionate about! In fact, I think I love reading even more than food! Life is so busy with all the teenagers these days though and I have been feeling bad about not having as much time to read to my youngest. So I’ve recruited help. The kids get to count it as a chore done for the day (that goes towards how much allowance they receive) and my little one gets 4 older siblings reading with her every day! Way more fun for her to have some variety and I love knowing she is getting all of that reading time in, even if I can’t be the one to do it all the time.

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