Whiskey Chocolate Chip Craisin Cookies

Whiskey, chocolate and dried cranberries were made for each other. Enjoy the flavor combination in this delicious boozy cookie!

I enjoyed baking my bourbon chocolate chunk cookies so much that I wanted to try making more boozy cookies. I started thinking about St Patrick's Day, which is a holiday I don't usually celebrate, but could serve as inspiration for a new recipe. So I googled Irish alcoholic drinks and saw Whiskey & Cranberry in a top ten drinks list. Since I knew I'd had success with bourbon (a form of whiskey), I felt safe experimenting with whiskey. Then google confirmed that chocolate pairs well with both whiskey and cranberries and....viola! This delightfully chocolaty sweet and tart cookie was created!

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Whiskey Chocolate Chip Craisin Cookies

Makes 16 cookies*

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted

• 1/4 cup granulated sugar

• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed

• 1 large egg

• 1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

• 2 tbsp bourbon

• 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 1 tsp salt

• 1 1/2 cups + 1 tbsp all-purpose flour

• 4 oz semi sweet chocolate bar, cut into bite sized chunks** (about 1/2 cup)

• 1/2 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

• 1/4 cup craisins (dried cranberries)

* See my notes

Instructions

1. Line a freezer bag with parchment paper.

2. Soak your craisins in hot water. Set aside.

3. In a large bowl, heat the butter until it is just melted and let cool.

4. Pour both sugars in to the butter and whisk until combined.

5. Add the egg, vanilla extract and whiskey and whisk until smooth.

6. Add the baking soda and salt and whisk until combined.

7. Spoon the flour into your measuring cups and level off the tops. Add the flour and fold the mixture with a spatula.

8. Chop up your chocolate bar and add to the dough.

9. Drain the craisins with a paper towel. Then add the craisins and the chocolate chips to the dough and fold it all with a spatula.

10. Scoop the dough unto the parchment paper lined freezer bag.

11. Put the bag of dough in the freezer and let it sit for a minimum of 8 hours, but overnight is better. Letting it sit for a longer time makes the flavor so much stronger!

12. When you're ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Then place the frozen scoops on your baking sheet and bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 10-11 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle of a cookie comes out clean.

13. Remove cookies from the oven. They may look puffy, allow them to cool on the pan for 5 minutes or until they settle into shape.

14. Transfer to a cooling rack and allow them to cool for a final 5-10 minutes.

Notes

• *I use a 2.5 tbsp scoop (large) or larger for these cookies, because a bigger cookie = more bourbon in every bite!

• If you use a 1.5 tbsp cookie scoop (medium), it should yield about 24 cookies. Remove a 1 to 2 minutes of baking time for medium scoop cookies.

• **I used a 4 oz Ghiradelli semi sweet chocolate bar and 1/2 cup of Hershey's semi sweet chocolate chips when I took the photos for this post (chocolate bars photograph really well lol). But feel free to use whatever semi sweet morsels/chunks you want to get that delicious flavor.

• You can bake these straight from the freezer, or let them defrost on the counter a little as your oven preheats. If you leave them out as the oven preheats, you can decrease the baking time by a minute or so.

Photos