White Chocolate Cranberry Pecan Tea Cookies
This recipe for White Chocolate Cranberry Pecan Tea Cookies is another of my earliest recipes for my holiday goodie trays having made an appearance for about 13 years now. While I would love to give credit to an original source for the recipe, I honestly don’t recall where I found this recipe or what changes I made. What I can tell you is that these are another of my daughter’s favorites – I think she is drawn to the bright red edges and she loves cranberries. These are a classic shortbread cookie – buttery, crumbly and sandy in texture – loaded with tangy cranberries, sweet white chocolate and toasty pecans.
I wanted to post this recipe back to back with the World Peace Cookies recipe because they are similar in style and method. When I’m baking all of the holiday goodies, I usually make the White Chocolate Cranberry Pecan Tea Cookies and the World Peace Cookies about the same time. I love that the dough is very make ahead friendly. I typically make this dough several weeks in advance and freeze it until I’m ready to bake off the cookies. That is actually my strategy for all of my holiday baking – what can be made ahead without compromising flavor, texture or freshness?
The weeks ahead of packing up the trays for delivery are spent in a flurry of mixing and shaping various doughs and storing them in the freezer for later. Then, as close to the final date as possible, all the dough gets scooped or sliced or rolled and shuttled through the ovens (it REALLY helps to have two ovens to work with) on my largest sheet pans to reduce the total number of batches I need to run. Every year it seems like I’m not going to have time to get every cookie and confection made, but every year, I somehow manage to make it work.
White Chocolate Cranberry Pecan Tea Cookies
Equipment
- Electric mixer
- mixing bowl
- measuring cups (or kitchen scale)
- measuring spoons
- cookie sheets
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter unsalted
- ½ cup sugar
- 2 tablespoon heavy cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 ¾ cup flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¾ cup dried cranberries finely chopped
- ½ cup pecans toasted and finely chopped
- ½ cup white chocolate finely chopped
- red coarse/sanding sugar for rolling
Instructions
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add cream and vanilla, mix well.1 cup butter, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 tablespoon heavy cream, 1 teaspoon vanilla
- Add flour and salt, mix just until dough begins to come together. Stir in cranberries, pecans and white chocolate just until incorporated. Be careful not to overmix or the cookies will be tough.2 3/4 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt
- Roll the dough into two logs about 8 inches long each. Work quickly to avoid melting the butter and overworking the dough.
- Roll the logs in the sanding sugar until completely coated. Wrap each log tightly in waxed paper and chill for at least 2 hours.red coarse/sanding sugar for rolling
- Preheat oven to 350° F and line two cookies sheets with silicone mats or parchment paper.
- Slice cookies about 1/4 inch thick and place about 1/2 inch apart on the prepared cookie sheets.
- Bake for about 10 minutes, cookies should be set but should not brown.
- Allow cookies to cool on the pans for a minute before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.
Nutrition
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