cranberry oatmeal cookies

• 1 1/2 cups sweetened dried cranberries
• 1 cup orange juice
• 2/3 cup butter, softened
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups rolled oats
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup chopped white chocolate

1. In a small bowl, soak dried cranberries in orange juice to soften, about 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg. Combine the oats, flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt; stir into the creamed mixture. Drain cranberries and stir into the dough along with white chocolate making sure not to over-mix and make tough cookies. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

(from allrecipes.com)

for christmas, matthew gave me a bag of white chocolate chips and dried cranberries (it's obvious he wants something =P). so i felt obligated to bake something using these ingredients. so i searched on allrecipes.com for a recipe using these two ingredients, and this recipe came up. i normally don't use a recipe which hasn't been reviewed too much and which doesn't have a picture, but there weren't many options for recipes using white chocolate chips and cranberries, so i decided to give it a go. i must say, the dough was DRY before i added the cranberries to the mix and it was kind of scary looking. but the cranberries (which had been soaking in oj) added plenty of moisture when i added them. it actually made the dough really WET, which looked scary too.

anyway, after baking the cookies up, the thing about these cookies is that they look FUNNY. they look kind of pale, doughy, and raw on the top even though the dough is cooked through, and the shape that they take on is irregular. i tried different ways of shaping the dough, but i can't seem to make these cookies pretty. thankfully, i gotta say that they taste great. it's a good recipe, and the very sweet white chocolate perfectly offsets the tart cranberry. oh well, it's all the same in your stomach, no matter what it looks like...