Cranberry, Fudge & White Chocolate Cookies
This batch of cranberry, fudge & white chocolate cookies is insanely good! Soft, crisp & super fudgy these make a great festive treat.
Servings: 13 Cookies
Equipment
- Medium Sized Saucepan
- Stand Mixer
- Sieve
- 3 Large Baking Trays
- 9cm Cookie Cutter
Ingredients
- 200 g Unsalted Butter
- 150 g Light Brown Sugar
- 125 g Caster Sugar
- 1 Large Egg
- 2 Egg Yolks
- 300 g Plain Flour
- ½ tsp Table Salt
- ¾ tsp Baking Powder
- ¾ tsp Bicarbonate Of Soda
- 150 g White Chocolate
- 100 g Dried Cranberries
- 200 g Fudge
- Maldon Salt To Finish
Instructions
Cookie Dough
- Start by browning 120g of the butter. To do this, chop the butter into evenly sized pieces then place into a medium saucepan. Place over a medium heat & allow to melt, stirring regularly with a spatula. Keep cooking, until the butter starts to foam, smell nutty & you can see that the milk solids in the bottom of the pan have turned golden brown.
- Transfer the brown butter to a bowl then leave to cool to room temperature. In the meantime, chop the remaining 80g of butter into small pieces & leave to soften at room temperature.The brown butter should take around 30 minutes to cool.
- Next, place both butters into the bowl of a stand mixer along with the light brown sugar & the caster sugar.
- Using the paddle attachment, mix the butter & sugar on a medium speed until fully combined but no more than 2 minutes. It's important not to incorporate too much air at this stage!
- With the mixer still running, add in the egg & yolks then mix to combine.
- Next, sift in the flour, salt, baking powder & bicarbonate of soda then mix on a low speed until just combined.
- Roughly chop 70g of the white chocolate & cut the fudge into 1cm pieces. Add both into the cookie dough along with the cranberries & stir through.
- Place the bowl of cookie dough into a fridge & leave for 30 minutes, to firm up slightly.
- In the meantime, chop the remaining 80g of white chocolate into 13 chunks.
- Using a cookie scoop (or a spoon), portion the cookie dough into 13 equally sized portions. Each should weigh around 90 grams.
- With your hands, roll a portion of cookie dough into a ball then press a white chocolate chunk into the top. Repeat with the remaining dough.
- Place the balls of cookie dough into an airtight container & refrigerate overnight.
Baking The Cookies
- The next day, preheat an oven to 180°c/160°c fan (356°f/320°f).
- Next, place 3-4 balls of cookie dough onto a lined baking tray, making sure that there’s plenty of room between them.
- Bake the cookies for 8 minutes then open your oven door, lift up the baking tray inside the oven by a few inches then let it drop down against the oven rack. Use enough force so that the cookie starts to deflate. (This is the “Pan Banging” method.)Bake for a further 2 minutes then repeat the pan banging process.Bake for another 2 minutes (bringing the total bake time to 12 minutes) then remove from the oven.
- Using a large, round cookie cutter, scoot each cookie into a perfect round shape.
- Sprinkle each cookie lightly with Maldon salt then leave on the tray, to cool completely.
- Repeat the cooking process with the remaining cookies, baking 3-4 cookies at a time.
Notes
1. Cooking In An Aga - Bake the cookies in the baking oven on the bottom set of runners.
2. Storage - Kept in an airtight container, these cookies will stay fresh for up to 3 days.
3. Overnight Chill - The cookie dough requires an overnight chill in the fridge before being baked. Don’t be tempted to skip this step otherwise the cookies will spread out too much when baked.
4. The Pan Banging Method - The way we bake these cookies, is by using a technique called “Pan Banging”. This was created by Sarah Kieffer (The Vanilla Bean Blog) & is used in this recipe to create pools of melted chocolate & to give the cookies a crinkled texture.
5. Chocolate - When making cookies, it’s best to use bars of chocolate that have been roughly chopped as appose to chocolate chips. Chocolate chips won’t melt properly & you won’t get the molten pools of chocolate that can be achieved with chopped chocolate.
6. Fudge - For these cookies, you can use either homemade or shop bought fudge. They will taste great either way! I used a vanilla flavoured fudge but feel free to use a different flavour.