Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies Recipe

My cranberry oatmeal cookies recipe is one of my favorite cookies to bake this time of year. They are chewy, sweet and delicious and always a holiday party favorite.

- Table of Contents -

1. A Healthier Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies Recipe
2. What makes our Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies healthy?
3. Kitchen Favorites

If there’s ever a time to pull out your baking pans, measuring cups, and mixing bowls, the holiday season is it! This cranberry oatmeal cookies recipe baking in the oven makes the whole house smell delicious.

A Healthier Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies Recipe

Choosing to bake a healthy cranberry oatmeal cookies recipes takes a little bit to adjust if you’ve been using bleached white flour, refined white sugar, brown sugar and butter in your baking.

I used to grab those as my main cookie ingredients too. However, with just a few small switches, you can enjoy our cranberry oatmeal cookies recipe without any guilt if you want to have 2 more cookies! Or if you kids want an extra cookie.

Anytime you are baking and trying to make something both healthy and tasty there’s a very narrow margin for error.

I have a few tricks for making our cranberry oatmeal cookies recipe even healthier. I switched extra-virgin coconut oil in place of butter or other unhealthful omega-6 rich vegetable oils. Cup-for-cup whole grain gluten free flour replaces wheat flour.

What makes our Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies healthy?

There’s a few very important swaps that we want to encourage you to make and we’re also going to tell you why these swaps are so much better for you too in this cranberry oatmeal cookies recipe.

#1: A truly healthy cookie should be low in refined sugar

Sweetness should come primarily from unrefined “whole” fruits. We only use unrefined sugar such as organic coconut palm sugar. It is unrefined and actually still contains nutrients so it is not a total empty calorie. Coconut palm sugar tastes and bakes like brown sugar, so if you can’t find it you can always use a bit of brown sugar.

#2: A healthy cookie should contain no trans fats.

Our cookie recipe contains no trans fats. Which means, we don’t use margarine, vegetable oil or vegetable shortening.

#3: Cookies should not contain animal fat either.

A truly healthy cookie should contain almost zero animal fat. This can be achieved by swapping extra virgin coconut oil for butter.

If you buy a high quality extra virgin coconut oil the tropical flavor intrinsic to coconuts is completely undetectable when mixed with the other ingredients.

My favorite brand of high quality coconut oil is Barlean’s Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil.

#4: Cookies should be made with 100% whole grains and no refined flours.

The healthy cranberry oatmeal cookies in the recipe below are made with one of my favorite 1-for-1 whole grain King Arthur gluten free flour. The whole grain ingredients are: rice flour, tapioca starch, potato starch, whole grain brown rice flour. You can learn more about flours here.

#5: A healthy cookie should include a handful of healthful fats.

You can enrich your cookies by using nuts, chia seeds, nut butters and flaxseeds. In this recipe, we added in a 1/2 a cup of walnuts which gives our cranberry oatmeal cookies a delicious nutty flavor.

BONUS #1: Use rolled oats instead of instant oats.

If all you have is instant oats, go ahead and use them. But if you’re looking for a more nutrient dense cookie, we suggest trying rolled oats instead.

BONUS #2: Swap your chocolate chips for dairy free chocolate chips.

We love Enjoy Life brand because they make delicious dairy free chocolate chips. But you can also use raw cacao nibs or raw cacao powder for your chocolate flavor.

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