Leftover Cranberry Sauce Christmas Cookies

Last Christmas season I shared a recipe for my favorite Christmas cookie. It actually isn’t a Christmas cookie, but I only make them at Christmas. This is because they are one of those things that shouldn’t be made often because they are way too good! In fact, these are the first Christmas cookies polished off at the family gatherings, so 2 large pans of it are made every year. The cookie itself is a simple one to make it easily lends itself to variety, so inspiration to experiment came easily. My recent experiment involved leftover cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving and white chocolate which resulted in a fabulously delicious new version of this cookie. So today I want to share my recipe for Leftover Cranberry Sauce Christmas Cookies with you.

Cranberry sauce is one of those foods that people either love or hate. It’s always on our Thanksgiving dinner because I can’t imagine leaving it off the Thanksgiving table, but there are always leftovers as we are a divided camp here on it. However, since cranberry sauce freezes well there’s no need to toss the leftovers. The remaining cranberry sauce is put in the freezer for another use such as these delicious cookies. In fact, these cookies are so good you may even win over the cranberry sauce haters to these cookies like I did.

It’s the white chocolate on top of these cookies that makes them winners. White chocolate goes with just about anything sweet including cranberry, not to mention they are a popular and classic pairing. But I also used the white chocolate because very few people around here would eat cranberry cookies around here without having the drizzle of white chocolate to tempt them. Case in point, my husband is not a cranberry sauce eater, but he happily ate many of these cookies- ha!

You can easily double, triple, etc. this recipe and freeze the cookies for Christmas. They are easy to make and will be a success at your gathering. If you don’t have a cranberry sauce recipe then use this easy one here.

Leftover Cranberry Sauce christmas Cookies

Makes one 9 x 9 pan or 11 x 7 pan

1 cup of butter, softened

3/4 cup of organic cane sugar or white sugar

1/4 tsp. of sea salt

1 tsp. of almond extract

2 cups white organic flour

4 oz of almond paste (NOT almond filling)

1 heaping cup of leftover, whole berry cranberry sauce softened in microwave a bit.

4 oz of white chocolate

To make:

Combine butter, sugar, salt, and almond extract in stand mixer and using the paddle attachment combine well. Add flour and mix some more. Setting aside one cup of dough for the topping, take the rest of the dough and press into a greased 9 x 9 pan or an 11 x 7. Spread cranberry sauce on top of this. Next, take the 1 cup of dough set aside and put back in the mixer with the paddle attachment. Break up the almond paste into small chunks and combine into dough using the mixer. This will create the crumb topping. Sprinkle this on top of cranberry sauce evenly and lightly press down. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes or until edges are lightly browned and top it started to lightly brown. Don’t overbake.

Have a great day!