A love that floats

Cranberry-Orange Chocolate Chip Cookies

As some of you know from my Twitter feed, I fell in love this weekend.

My new love and I, we have been dating for a long time but mostly saw each other around holiday time. Occasionally I’d have a drink with them during the year. But this weekend I spent many hours with them in the kitchen, and they so impressed me with their vitality, pizzazz, beauty, versatility and sassiness, well, it was hard to resist their allure any longer.

I am, of course, talking about cranberries.

What’s not to love, really. Along with above listed attributes, cranberries are good dried or fresh. During cranberry season you can buy extra bags, pop them in the freezer and have cranberries all year long. They are good in all manner of sweets, and help cut the fattiness in rich savory dishes. The berries pair well with bright flavors like orange, or dark, spicier flavors like gingerbread. You can cook them down with sugar, and c/o the pectin in them, they’ll turn jelly-like with no problem. And for goodness’ sake, the float. And to find out if they’re fresh, drop one and see if they bounce! See? They’re even FUN to be with.

The greatest cranberry miracle for me is when I make my mother’s fresh cranberry relish for Thanksgiving. I combine all the ingredients (sugar, orange, bourbon, cranberries) in the food processor, jar it up, put it in the fridge. A day later what was once a rather odd-looking blend of ingredients has transformed itself into a glistening, ruby-hued jar of relish.

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My Mom’s Cranberry Relish

(It shouldn’t surprise anyone that my mom’s recipe comes straight from the back of the Ocean Spray cranberry bag. The large glug of bourbon was her stellar improvement.)

*adapted from the Ocean Spray cranberry company*

What You’ll Need:

1 medium orange, cut into eighths, skin and all and deseeded

1 bag (fresh or frozen) cranberries

A hefty glug of bourbon

What You’ll Do:

In a food processor, put half the orange slices and half the cranberries and pulse until evenly chopped. Scrape the mixture into a large bowl. Repeat with the remaining orange slices and cranberries. Add the sugar to mixture and blend. Add a glug or two or… of bourbon and stir. Store in a jar in refrigerator until ready to use. It’s best made 2-3 days before you need it. Any leftover can be frozen or mixed into muffins.

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I am working on an encycolpedia of chocolate chip cookie recipes—a project I’m hoping a very nice literary agent/publisher out there will find as desirable as warm cookies fresh from the oven, so it only seemed right to work my cranberries into a cookie recipe.

After a number of different tries—some too flat, some too gooey—I realized a cake-y cookie was in order and the following cookie was born, in all its goodness.

These cookies are terrific warm, but on their second day of existence, the cranberry turns more jelly-like.

I’ve added orange zest to the dough because orange, chocolate and cranberries play very nicely together.

I tried versions with whole berries, hand-sliced berries and another with berries chopped in a food processor. I far preferred whole berries, but you do you.

Feel free to substitute whole wheat flour or spelt flour for half of the white flour. Although I haven’t tried it, a blend of fine almond flour and oat flour often make a good gluten-free substitute when used together.

Other great additions include:

• 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger

• 1 cup of good-quality white chocolate chips

• 1- 1 1/2 cups toasted walnuts or pecans

These are great for a Thanksgiving hostess gift, or nice Thanksgiving dessert buffet option for those (annoying) people who “just want a little taste of something sweet” at the end of the meal. I may resent them for their restraint, but that’s no reason they should suffer.

Enjoy them. Let me know what you think. And it’s okay if you fall in love with cranberries, too. I’m not the jealous type.

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CRANBERRY ORANGE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

You’ll need:

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 sticks cold butter, cut into chunks(note: COLD….we want these to stay puffy, not spread)

1 cup white sugar

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

2 teaspoons (packed) orange zest (basically the zest from one large navel orange)

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

2 cups fresh cranberries

What You’ll Do:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment, or grease them with butter.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside.

3. With a stand or hand mixer, cream the butter for a minute or two, scraping down the sides and beater, until the mixture is smooth.

4. Add the sugars and orange zest and mix for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides and beat for another minute until smooth.

5. Add the eggs one at a time on medium speed, scraping down after each addition. Raise speed to medium-high and blend for 20 seconds to make the mixture look more emulsified (less wet).

6. Add the flour mixture and blend on low speed until the flour has begun to disappear. Raise mixer to medium speed and blend for a further 30 seconds or so until the mixture looks evenly blended. Add the chips and cranberries and blend for 15 seconds on low, then raise to medium speed and give it all a good blend.

7. You could refrigerate the dough now, covered, until you are ready to bake the cookies. But if you’re the impatient sort (um, like me), you want to taste these, so roll the dough into 1 1/2 tablespoon balls (about walnut size). Bake for 13-15 minutes or until golden.

8. Let cool on the pan for a minute before cooling further on a baking rack.

9. Enjoy.

There are many more recipes in the works for the upcoming weeks before Thanksgiving, and yes, many of them contain cranberries. (There is a pumpkin gingerbread cake with cranberries and a rum-caramel glaze cooling on the counter as I type.)

I’d be very grateful if you’d leave comments and invite your friends to subscribe to this substack for my blend of baking and politics. (Please note today’s newsletter is absent any comments about anti-vaxxers who wear yellow stars of David, Donald and his crew willfully killing thousands of Americans by asking the CDC to fudge the data about Covid and lie about it, or Mark Meadows, or Madge T. Green sending us all a photo of her reading her big ol’ Bible.I guess cranberry love can do that to a girl.)

Let me know your thoughts.

With cranberies and relish,

Marissa