Just after Christmas my partner went food shopping and came home with two reduced punnets of fresh cranberries. I have no earthly idea what she thought we would do with fresh cranberries (let alone two packs!), but they had been enough of a bargain to justify their purchase. Ever since, they’ve sat in my freezer taking up valuable space and irritating me every time I’ve had to manoeuvre around them in order to get to something I’ve needed in the freezer, so I snapped the other day and let them defrost overnight and decided to try to make some cranberry cookies with them.

(At the time of writing, fresh cranberries have not been tested by Monash Uni, but they have been tested by King’s College in London and certified low FODMAP on their British Food Maestro app. Two of these cranberry cookies is a low FODMAP portion.)

I have to be honest, when I started making these cookies I was really sceptical as to whether a tart fresh cranberry would work in a sweet sugar cookie, but thankfully I was massively pleasantly surprised! The cranberries weren’t as tart as I’d expected and instead were actually really tasty and sweet within the cookies. They also gave off a beautiful floral perfumed sort of scent as they were baking. I didn’t realise that cranberries had such a complex flavour!

These cranberry cookies are at their best when eaten the same day as they’ve been baked, but they freeze really well too. Next time I think I’ll sandwich them with a buttercream icing, a bit like I did with my Strawberry Shortcakes. Although I made these cranberry cookies with fresh cranberries they’re very much a seasonal fruit, so if you want to make these and you can’t get your hands on fresh cranberries you could substitute them with 80g of dried cranberries instead. If you do bake them, let me know what you think!

Ingredients:

130g fresh cranberries (chopped)

100g custard powder

150g gluten-free flour (I use Dove’s Farm G/F flour because it’s made with low FODMAP ingredients whereas many other gluten-free flours are made with high FODMAP options.)

100g icing sugar

125g butter (or non-dairy version)

1 tsp lemon extract

1 tbsp rice milk

Ingredients for a buttercream icing:

50g soft butter (or a non-dairy version)

110g icing sugar

2 tsps of rice milk

Method:

Preheat your oven to 200C/180C Fan/400F/Gas Mark 6 and line 2 baking trays with greaseproof paper.

Measure your dry ingredients into a mixing bowl and then rub the butter and lemon extract into the flour mixture until it has the texture of fine sand.

Add the rice milk and bring it together until it forms a firm dough. (Gluten-free flour can be temperamental, so if it’s too dry to come together add a little bit more rice milk at a time until it  forms a dough.)

Divide the dough into 16 small balls and place them on the baking trays with plenty of room between each of them because they will spread.

Bake for 15-20 mins or until they are golden brown.

If you’re going to be making them with a buttercream filling then make your frosting now by mixing all of the buttercream ingredients together in a bowl until they are fully combined. Leave to one side.

Leave to cool before either munching them, freezing them or sandwiching them together with buttercream icing.

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IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY THIS:

Raspberry Chocolate Torte 

CHOCOLATE FUDGE CAKE

RICE CRISPY CAKES

CHOCOLATE SOUFFLÉS 

If you like this you can buy the E-book!

Or you can buy the paperback edition!

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