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 Home > Features > Recipes > Cranberry Orange Breakfast Cookie Recipe
Cranberry Orange Breakfast Cookie
This recipe for cranberry orange breakfast cookies is
courtesy of JeanMarie Brownson and the Chicago Tribune.
It was originally printed on March 9, 2008 in this article. The nutritionals are provided by Jodie Shield.
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Chilling time: 1 hour
Cooking time: 12 minutes
Yield: About 4 dozen
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
Zest of 1 small orange
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 cups uncooked muesli cereal
3/4 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup chopped dates or candied orange peel or a combination
Cream butter and sugars with a mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Beat in the eggs, zest and vanilla.
Beat in the flours, baking soda, cinnamon and salt until incorporated.
Stir in the muesli, cranberries and dates.
Refrigerate dough for one hour.
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Drop walnut-size dollops of the cookie dough about 2 inches apart on the parchment-lined cookie sheet.
Bake until bottoms are golden, about 12 minutes.
Cool on pans one to two minutes.
Transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
Store in airtight bins.
#1 Back to top 
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The cranberries used in this recipe are a product
of a farm in Traverse City, Michigan. Traverse City
is the finish line of the famous annual
Iceman Cometh Mountain Bike Race.
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#2 Back to top
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The recipe calls for either dates or candied orange
peels. I recommend the dates. You can even find them
chopped already as this product shows.
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#3 Back to top
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Here's all the bad stuff in one bowl ready to be
mixed: butter, dark brown sugar, and regular sugar.
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#4 Back to top
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Orange before it was abused.
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#5 Back to top
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Zest of an orange. When I was shopping for ingredients
at my local discount mega, all-in-one,
grocery-electronics-clothes-and-auto-parts-store, I asked
an employee where I could find orange zest. The employee
brought me over to the soap aisle and said that they were
out of orange Zest. I sensed that explaining what I was
really seeking would not have done much good, so I grabbed
the Ocean Energy body wash (I needed some anyway), thanked
him, and pushed my cart to the fruit aisle. I figured that
if I brought home an orange, I might be in good shape.
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#6 Back to top
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Naturally when I got home I searched the internet
for information on how to zest an orange. It turns out
that having an orange is a BIG help. Zesting an orange
is similar to grating cheese. The idea is to scrape off
the outer rind and capture the oil and pulp that reside
in that layer. Use a fine cheese grater if you don’t have
a citrus zester. If you have a citrus zester, you probably
can’t find it, so use the cheese grater. Zest the orange
until you just start to get to the bitter white colored
rind. Stop there. Mind your fingers.
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#7 Back to top
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Orange after it was abused.
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#8 Back to top
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All that work and you get something close to
an eighth of a cup.
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#9 Back to top
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Mix all the bad stuff together and add the cranberries,
dates, and orange zest.
Add the eggs. Pick out the pieces of eggshell that fell
into the bowl. You can leave the small pieces and say
that they’re in the recipe for added calcium. If your
standards are higher than mine, the cheese
grater also works well for fishing out the eggshell.
If the contents of your bowl look
very unappetizing, give yourself a pat on the back, you're
doing well!
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#10 Back to top
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The recipe calls for 1 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of whole
wheat flour. Mix whatever you'd like... just keep the volume
to around 1-1/2 cups.
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#11 Back to top
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To be honest with you, I don’t know what muesli cereal is.
I saw Mueslix at the grocery store, but it didn’t look
that good. I just figured I would use some cereal that I
had at home. So, in this recipe I used the rest of my
Honey Bunches of Oats (2 cups) and added a cup of Total
Cranberry Crunch. After adding the cereal I saw that the
recipe called for uncooked muesli cereal. I was only a
little concerned about that, and proceeded without much
hesitation.
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#12 Back to top
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Grab chunks of batter and place them onto parchment
paper over a cooking sheet. Give these guys some wide
berth as they definitely flatten out during baking (see
photos below.)
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#13 Back to top
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Bake at 350 degrees F until the bottoms are golden, about 12 minutes.
If you decide that you're not going to set a timer for those 12 minutes and
you go into the other room to watch TV, the bottoms of your cookies will
be a very black shade of golden.
Nutrition information per serving: (one cookie)
94 calories, 40% of calories from fat, 4 g fat, 2 g saturated fat, 19 mg cholesterol, 13 g carbohydrates, 1 g protein, 49 mg sodium, 1 g fiber
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#14 Back to top
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Conclusions & Recommendations:
Good recipe, but I would prefer a lighter cereal cookie. Two
sticks of butter is way too much for these roundies. I
suggest cutting back to 1-1/4 sticks of butter. You can
also cut it down to 1 stick of butter plus one avocado.
Also try shortening in an amount that is equivalent to
1-1/4 sticks of butter. Using shortening will prevent the
cookies from flattening out like cow pies as mine did.
Enjoy!
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