Cranberry, Pistachio and White Chocolate Cookies

I think I may have found my go-to Cranberry, Pistachio and White Chocolate cookie.

I actually made a batch of these a week earlier while I was prepping for my fourth annual baking night with red and green colored white chocolate chips, sans nuts. I didn't think the cookies were anything special but Andrew and his sister Amanda kept raving about them, so I decided to make a second batch. With a little tweaking, these cookies looked and tasted great, and may make it into my annual Christmas baking list.

Adapted from Yankee Magazine's White Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookie recipe.

Ingredients
2/3 cup finely snipped dried sweetened cranberries (I skipped the "snipped" part and just dumped in the cranberries as is - Ocean Spray Craisins or Trader Joe's dried cranberries both work great!)
2 tablespoons water (I omitted this part as well - I didn't think the cranberries needed to be softened)
3/4 cup white granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup butter
1 large egg
2 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped nuts (I used whole roasted and salted pistachios from Trader Joe's, plus I chopped a half cup to top the cookies with)
2 cups (12 oz package) white chocolate chips - (try to use anything that lists cocoa butter as an ingredient for a decent white chocolate - again, Trader Joe's came through on this front with the best quality and price)

Directions

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees
2. Cream butter and sugars, then add egg.
3. In another bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, pistachios, and white chocolate chips. Add to first mixture. (I combined all the dry ingredients with the butter/egg/sugar mixture first, and then added cranberries, nuts and chips.

Look how pretty and festive all the ingredients look - I love seeing the red of the cranberries and the green of the pistachios:

4. Drop by spoonfuls on parchment lined cookie sheets. (I used my handy dandy Oxo cookie scoop to form rounded balls, gently pushed the tops into crushed pistachios and baked on my Silpat covered cookie sheets).

The ratio of cookie dough to ingredients was insane - I felt like there was barely enough cookie dough to hold all the pistachio, cranberry and white chocolate goodness but somehow, it all came together:

After coming out of the oven, I loved how the cookies retained their rounded shape, ensuring that they would stay crisp on the outside and soft on the inside:

The best part - the roasted pistachios on top. I couldn't stop picking bits off and eating them! Their saltiness and toasted flavor balanced out the sweetness from the chocolate and cranberries:


This batch ended up being split in two, one half for Andrew's Christmas Eve office potluck and one half for dessert at Andrew's parents' place on Christmas eve. I think I ended up with around four dozen cookies with my medium size scoop.

I also made a chocolate cake with white chocolate peppermint ganache for Andrew's Christmas potluck, but I was so frustrated by how messy the cake got at the end that I didn't bother taking picures. It apparently turned out amazing so I will have to make it again, this time carefully and with pictures documenting all the steps!