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These pretty Cranberry Hootycreeks make a welcome holiday cookies in a jar gift for family and friends. They combine white chocolate chips, dried cranberries and chopped pecans to give a seasonal twist to traditional oatmeal cookies. Printable Label included!

What are Cranberry Hootycreeks?

Hootycreeks are a tasty oatmeal cookie that combines cranberries with white chocolate chips and nuts. The origin of the name seems to be a mystery, I couldn’t find any source that explained it, so if you know please tell me! But although the name is kind of funny the cookies are delicious, and are an excellent cookie to make in a jar and give as a holiday gift.

Cookies in a Jar

Sometimes it seems like gift giving is something that gets more complicated every year and causes stress during the holidays. You can be stressed about finding the perfect gift, or about how much money you want to spend. It is important to remember that you should give out of love, not out of obligation. Simple homemade gifts are a great way to show that you care. I like to make food gifts, because I enjoy cooking, and a cookie mix in a jar makes a great gift, because your recipients can bake the cookies after the holidays are done and enjoy a special treat.

Making the Cookies in a Jar

The process of putting this cookie mix in jar together is fairly straight forward. You simply layer the ingredients one at a time in a wide mouth quart sized mason jar. If you try to use a narrow mouth jar you will probably end up with ingredients all over the table! In the recipe below the flour is split into 2 layers, with a layer of rolled oats in the middle. This is done just to make the final product prettier, by breaking up the boring white flour with a layer of oats.

After the flour and oats and essentials like salt and baking soda are added both brown and white sugar are poured into the jar. This is followed by a layer of dried cranberries, a layer of white chocolate chips and then the entire jar is topped off with chopped pecans.

It takes only a few minutes to add all the ingredients for the cranberry hootycreeks to the jar and then you have an easy gift that is perfect for holiday giving.

Baking the Cranberry Hootycreeks

Of course you need to include instructions with the gift to tell your recipient how to bake up a batch of these tasty cookies! To make it easy for gift giving I included a printable label with all the baking directions below. Just click on the picture below to download a pdf that you can attach to the jar.

I decided that before I could give these cranberry hootycreeks as a gift I had to bake up a jar – just to be thorough! So before Thanksgiving I dumped a jar into a mixer bowl and added butter, an egg and a bit of vanilla. I mixed together and dropped the cookies onto a cookie sheet for baking. I am happy to report that the resulting cookies were delicious – they were soft and chewy, and the tangy cranberries combined well with the white chocolate chips. The cranberry hootycreeks themselves are also pretty, with flecks of red cranberries contrasting with the white chocolate. The recipe made about 30 cookies.

Decorating the Cookies in a Jar

When you are making a homemade cookie in a jar mix it is nice to decorate the mason jar for the season. I decided to go with a simple red and white cooking twine, which I tied around the jar. I also taped the decorative cranberry hootycreek instruction label to the jar. Another great way to decorate these mason jar gifts is to add fabric to the jar lid. A square of holiday fabric about 5 in x 5 in is about the right size to put on top of the inner lid of the jar, and you can use the outer rim of the jar lid to secure it.

Making easy DIY gifts like this cookie in a jar mix is a great way to simplify the holidays so that you can concentrate on the people that you love and the things that are really important to you!

Two mason jars filled with cookies in a jar.

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