Celebrate the season with sourdough white chocolate cranberry cookies, a festive treat brimming with sweet white chocolate, tart cranberries, and a hint of sourdough tang. Perfect for holiday gatherings, these cookies bring warmth, cheer, and a unique twist to your dessert table!

These sourdough white chocolate cranberry cookies make such a lovely sourdough baked Christmas gift, just like these sourdough shortbread cookies and sourdough cranberry orange sourdough bread.

A green tray laid with a pile of sourdough white chocolate cranberry cookies. There is also a cup of coffee on the tray. In the foreground, there is a cookie with a bite taken out of it.

Why You'll Love This Recipe!

- Festive colors and flavors
- Perfect for gifting and sharing
- Fermented with sourdough starter

Festive Color and Flavor - these delicious sourdough cookies feature dried cranberries, white chocolate chips and almond extract bringing together festive flavors in an easy to share dessert cookie.

Perfect for Gifting - with all the festive flavors and colors, these sourdough white chocolate cranberry cookies make a thoughtful holiday gift for friends, neighbours and teachers.

Fermented with Sourdough Starter - adding sourdough starter to this cookie dough means you can ferment the mixture (ideally for 24 hours) to create better flavor and texture, meanwhile, allowing your sourdough starter to work it's magic.

A pile of sourdough white chocolate cranberry cookies sitting on a round wooden platter.

Ingredients

All Purpose Flour
Baking Soda + Salt
White Chocolate Chips - I've used chocolate chips in my cookies. If you prefer a more "molten" or melted chocolate texture to your cookies, you can use chocolate chunks or chopped chocolate.
Dried Cranberries - I've used dried cranberries in these cookies as I like the tartness. If you want to use fresh or frozen, I recommend adding an extra 50g of flour to the mixture. You can use the same amount of fresh or frozen cranberries as dried in the recipe.
Sourdough Starter - you can use active sourdough starter or unfed discard, it doesn't really matter for this recipe, especially if you are going to ferment the cookie dough in the fridge.
Butter - Make sure you melt the butter for this recipe before you start. Letting it cool just slightly before you add it to the other ingredients will give you the best result. You don't want it to have cooled too much - it should still be slightly warm. I use salted butter in this recipe, but you can use unsalted butter if you prefer.
Brown + White Sugar - using a combination of brown sugar and white sugar gives these sourdough cookies a depth to their sweetness and ensures crispy edges.
Eggs - 2 medium eggs for this recipe. If your eggs are really big (like over 65g, just use one whole egg plus an egg yolk).
Almond Extract - I love the flavor almond extract brings to these cookies. I urge you to try it! But you can swap out with vanilla extract if you prefer.

How To Make Sourdough White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

When developing this recipe, I started with my original sourdough chocolate chip cookie recipe. This recipe works so well, so I only had to make a few tweaks to ensure these sourdough white chocolate cranberry cookies are just as good!

I love fermenting this sourdough white chocolate cranberry cookie dough in the fridge for at least 24 hours to get the best sourdough tang to my cookies. I highly recommend it. It also allows your sourdough starter to work its magic on your dough.

Place the all purpose flour, baking soda, salt, white chocolate and cranberries into a large mixing bowl and combine. Set this aside.

Now in a separate bowl, combine sourdough starter, melted butter, brown sugar, white sugar, eggs and almond extract. Whisk together until they resemble runny caramel.

Now pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir to form the cookie dough.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place into the fridge for 24 hours.

The next day, when you are ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 165C (330F) and line two cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Use a cookie scoop or large spoon to scoop out balls of dough. I have used 50g dough balls for this recipe. Place the dough balls onto the prepared baking sheets.

Balls of sourdough white chocolate cranberry cookie dough laid out on a cookie sheet.

Place the cookies into the oven for 12 to 13 minutes at 165C (330F) or until they are golden brown on top but still molten in the centre.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the tray for around 10 minutes. The cookies will continue to bake for a few minutes after they are removed from the oven and will firm up as they cool. After 10 minutes, carefully transfer to a wire rack and allow them to cool completely.

Tips For Success

For the best flavor and texture, ferment the dough for these sourdough cookies for at least 24 hours. The bowl of cookie dough is fine in the fridge for up to 48 hours.
Even if you feel the cookie dough is runny, don't be tempted to add extra flour or your cookies will turn out too cakey.

A pile of sourdough cranberry white chocolate cookies stacked up on top of each other. The cookie on the top has been broken in half so you can see the chewy inside.

Flavor Variations

While I love these cookies just the way they are, there are also a few flavor twists you can add to make them taste even better! Here are a few ideas:

Cranberry Orange - add the zest of 2 oranges to your cookie dough. You can either leave the white chocolate chips in or swap them out for semi sweet chocolate chips.
Double Chocolate Cranberry - swap out half the white chocolate chips for semi sweet chocolate chips for a double chocolate hit!
Almond Cranberry - to further enhance the almond flavor in these cookies, add 100g of slivered almonds to the mixture. You can also add some flaked almonds to the top of the cookies before baking.

How To Store + Freeze

You can keep these cookies fresh for about 3 or 4 days in an airtight container. I find they stay freshest in a glass jar. Avoid storing them in a plastic container.

These can be frozen too. I freeze baked cookies on a cookie tray and then pop into a ziploc bag. That way I can take out a couple to pop into lunchboxes when I need them. They defrost well.

You can also freeze the cookie dough and bake cookies as you want them. I freeze the dough into balls and then place into a ziploc bag so I can grab out a handful as I want them. Pop the frozen balls onto a baking tray and let them soften a little before baking as per normal.