Cranberry Orange Swirl Cookies

These sugar cookies are outstanding!. Packed with orange flavor, not too sweet, a bit of tanginess from fresh cranberries and divine aroma of orange zest. And they also look so beautiful!

A delicious treat that looks pretty and tastes so good. These are great to have around during holidays, but don’t expect them to stay longer, these are definitely a crowd pleaser!

These are sugar cookies with added orange zest and with a filling made with fresh cranberries and orange peel.

Let’s take a look at MUST HAVES:
1. Butter at room temperature – The butter has to be soft enough to be mixed with sugar to make perfect sugar cookies
2. Fresh Cranberries and Fresh Orange zest – The fresh ingredients work best in this recipe, don’t use frozen.
3. Plastic wrap to keep the dough in fridge so that it doesn’t dry out.

Here’s is what you need for making around 20 cookies

For the dough:
1/2 cup unsalted butter (at room temperature)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 whole eggs
1/2 tablespoon orange zest (fresh)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp corn starch
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder

For the filling:
1/2 cup cranberries (fresh)
1/8 cup sugar
1/2 tbsp orange zest (fresh)

Method:

1. In a mixing bowl, add butter and sugar and mix until fluffy. Add vanilla, orange zest and one egg. Mix until well combined.
2. In a large bowl, sift all dry ingredients – flour, salt, baking powder and corn starch. Then add these dry ingredients to butter mixture until well combined.
3. On a plastic wrap, take out the dough, flatten it with a rolling pin. Cover it on all sides with plastic wrap and keep this dough in refrigerator for at least 1 hour.
4. Now for the filling, in a food processor combine fresh cranberries and sugar and pulse them until fine. Then take it out and mix orange zest.
5. After one hour, take out the dough, roll it, spread cranberry filling leaving some gap on all four sides.
6. Now roll this starting with a longer edge. Use the plastic wrap to avoid it sticking to your hands. Roll it as tight as you can. Then again wrap this in the plastic wrap and chill this dough for at least 2-3 hours.
7. After 2-3 hours, take out the rolled dough, remove it from plastic wrap and cut equal size cookies using a sharp knife.
8. Bake these in an oven at 375 F for 9-10 minutes.
9. When you take them out, they will be soft, let them cool and they will have a perfect softish crunchy texture.