Cranberry time - another family favorite cookie

We love cranberries or any northern European tart berries and lingonberries, and use pounds of cranberries in holiday cooking.

I was just looking at Twist Your Stitches blog and saw her holiday cranberry hootycreeks -- what a great name. I know we will love them, esp. since they have BOTH cranberries and white chocolate in them.

So I thought I'd share an easy drop cookie with powdered sugar smeared-on icing:

Cranberry Jewels - holiday cookies
(US baking measurements)

1/2 c Sugar
1/3 c Firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 c Margarine or butter, softened
2 c Flour
1/2 t Baking powder
1/2 t Baking soda
1/4 t Salt
1/4 c Orange juice
1 Egg
1/2 t Vanilla
1 T Grated orange peel

1 1/2 c Chopped cranberries (frozen ones can be chopped in food processor (or use other small red tart berries -- I usually use ones that I have frozen)
1/4 c finely chopped nuts (we use either walnuts, pecans, or none)


-----------------------------------GLAZE-----------------------------------
2 c Powdered sugar
2 T Orange juice
2 T finely Chopped cranberries (use frozen ones or freeze your own -- otherwise they will be too soft)

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Grease cookie sheets. In large bowl, cream sugar,
brown sugar and margarine. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup;
level off. Blend flour, baking powder, soda, salt, orange juice, egg,
vanilla and orange peel into creamed mixture. Stir in cranberries and
nuts. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls onto prepared cookie sheets. Bake at
375 for 9-13 min or until edges are light brown. Cool. In small
bowl, blend glaze ingredients. Dip top of cookies into glaze (which will be pink from the chopped cranberries) 4
dozen cookies.

c = cup
t = teaspoon
T = tablespoon

The icing will "drip" over the top of the cookies while getting hard, and then you can put them in tins in layers divided by parchment paper.

Enjoy! We've had the recipe for over 20 years from one of those check-out-isle supermarket cooking booklets. I no longer have the original recipe, so I don't know the name of the company.

Tomorrow we get a reality check and leave the mountains and go back down to .... the unpacking. Queue in horror music and Alfred Hitchcock backdrop .... but must start to make a dent in the boxes so the trash hauler on Monday can take a LOT of the paper away!