Enjoy gooey chocolate and tart cranberry in this scrumptious oatmeal cookie!
My friends and I host our annual Cookie Swap next week, and I can hardly wait. You’re probably wondering what’s the deal with this whole cookie swap thing in general, and I’ll tell you.
When the holidays come rolling around, my best friends and I dig up our favorite cookie recipes we believe reflect our past year, and celebrate with a cookie potluck. Yes-just cookies, nothing else. OK I lied- maybe coffee and hot chocolate, and fruit salad. Yum.
Anyways, before we chow down on each others’ delectable creations, each friend must explain why they’ve chosen their cookie recipe to represent their year.
For example, my girlfriend Holly whipped up these delicious peanut butter and jelly cookies which truly stood out from the crowd, flavor-wise. Her rationale? These PB&J-themed delights signified her daughter’s first year attending kindergarten, and the countless classic sandwiches she’d prepare her little girl before school each morning. Precious.
For this year’s cookie swap, I have oatmeal in mind. Dark Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal, that is. I absolutely adore oatmeal cookies; something about oats gives the cookies that decadent consistency and chewy texture. And this dressed-up version knocks ordinary oatmeal cookies out of the park.
These foolproof crowd-pleasers boast a crispy-on-the-outside, gooey-on-the-inside consistency that’ll drive your taste buds wild. And the best part? Our recipe calls for nothing but clean, wholesome ingredients you can feel good about.
Superfoods like cocoa powder, coconut oil, honey, and cranberries play a critical role in these delectable cookies, while offering some impressive health benefits worthy of pointing out. Let’s take a look:
Cocoa Powder: This chocolaty superfood flaunts some powerful health- boosting benefits. These include lowering bad cholesterol, elevating your mood, and packing in some critical minerals like magnesium, manganese and zinc.
Meanwhile, the powder’s high-fiber, low-calorie profile make it highly nutritious as well.
- Coconut Oil: The powerful superfood carries a laundry list of health benefits. First, it contains powerful antifungal, antimicrobial and antiviral properties that improve immunity by conquering viruses and bacteria. Moreover, the delicious oil promotes better digestion and weight loss, while helping to lower your bad cholesterol.
- Honey: As an incredible nutritious energy source, honey serves as a healthy natural sweetener bursting with antioxidant properties. Ironically, the sticky-sweet superfood helps regulate blood sugar and insulin levels when consumed in moderation!
- Cranberries: These tangy fruits are a great source of Vitamin C, manganese, and dietary fiber, while offering powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
This recipe strays far from your typical cookie, containing a bunch of flavorful gems and treasures like fruity-sweet cranberries and rich dark chocolate.
These pleasant surprises symbolized the fortunate delights I had experienced this past year, from meeting the love of my life one fateful, unexpected night to receiving the job offer of my dreams.
Oatmeal represents fruitfulness and prosperity, which is why I’ve chosen the particular superfood to star in this year’s cookie creation! I’ve wanted to express my gratefulness in a creative way, and felt designating this cookie recipe as representative of my past year seemed fitting.
Impress your friends and family with these decadently nutritious cookies. Their delectable flavor and flaunt-worthy presentation make these cooks simply irresistible.
Dark Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups oats
- 3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 tablespoons coconut oil melted
- 2 egg whites
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup pure honey
- 1/2 cup cranberries fresh or frozen (thawed), chopped
- 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking pan with parchment paper and set aside.
- In a small bowl, stir together the oats, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside. In a second large bowl, combine the coconut oil, egg whites, vanilla, and honey. Whisk until well combined. Gradually stir in the flour mixture just until incorporated. Gently stir in the cranberries and chocolate chips.
- Drop the cookie mixture by the large spoonful onto the prepared baking sheet. If a more flat cookie is desired, lightly press the cookie to flatten. Bake for 7 to 8 minutes or until center of the cookie is just cooked through. Cool for about 5 minutes before removing the cookies from the baking sheet.
Nutrition Information
Have you made this recipe?
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What size scoop did you use? A one inch? These look delicious!!!
Sky, One-inch is fine. I usually use a heaping one-inch scoop. 🙂
I literally just made these using a medium cookie scoop and it made 22 large cookies. They don’t look anything like the photo…it would be helpful if the instructions stated whether these are supposed to be dropped on the cookie sheet and flattened, or what. In the absence of specifics, I treated them as drop cookies and they didn’t spread at all. They look the same as they did when I put them in to bake. My husband likes them better than I do. I’d probably like them more if I had used semi-sweet chocolate chips but I used Lily’s no sugar added chips since that’s what I had on hand.
Thank you for your feedback and suggestions, Jill! These cookies do not spread since they do not contain butter, and our recipe does suggest using semi-sweet chocolate chips which do make them a bit sweeter, hopefully you will give the recipe another try with the semi-sweet chips! When I make these cookies, I typically treat them as a large drop cookie and don’t typically flatten them (as in the photo). I’ll make make the changes in the recipe to reflect how to place the cookies on the baking sheet.
Hi Nichole – thanks for the recipe! Do you think you can swap out the wheat flour for coconut flour? I haven’t used coconut flour a lot, and was wondering if you had and if you thought it would work?
Hi Janis – no, you cannot switch out coconut flour for this recipe. Coconut flour is very different from other flours and can make things very gummy. The ratio is also very extreme.