If you've ever tried baking with frozen raspberries, you already know the trade-off. Chill the dough long enough to firm up the butter, and the fruit turns to jam before it even reaches the tray. Skip the chill, and the cookies spread thin and greasy. These Sourdough White Chocolate Raspberry Cookies sidestep both problems: thick, bakery-style discs with crisp edges, a soft, chewy centre, and raspberries that stay put instead of bleeding pink through the dough.
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Recipe Highlights
TASTE: Tangy discard, nutty browned butter, tart bursts of jammy raspberry
FROZEN RASPBERRY FACTOR: Stays solid until it hits the oven, no bleed, no soggy centre
FREEZE INSTEAD OF FRIDGE CHILL: Frozen raspberries would thaw in the fridge. We shape the cookies and place them in the freezer instead.
SEB'S RATING: Sent me a message from work wishing he had more cookies to snack on.
Ingredient Notes
You'll find the full quantities and method in the recipe card below, but a few ingredients here are worth understanding properly before you start.
- Browned butter. Melt it in a light-coloured pan so you can actually see it change colour, then keep going past melted to foaming, golden and nutty-smelling. Tip it out into a bowl straight away so it doesn't scorch. It has to cool completely to room temperature before you beat it with the sugar, warm butter will keep the dough too warm for frozen raspberries.
- Sourdough discard. This recipe uses unfed, 100% hydration discard, whisked in by hand rather than beaten with the mixer, which keeps gluten development to a minimum and avoids tough cookies. If you're new to discard or want to know what else it's good for, Sourdough Discard 101 covers the basics.
- Frozen raspberries. Non-negotiable here, and it's not a substitution shortcut. Frozen fruit holds its shape through mixing and scooping in a way fresh raspberries can't, which matters enormously for a recipe with no fridge chill. Tossing them in a little extra flour or cornstarch before folding in helps soak up the moisture they release as they thaw during baking.
- White chocolate. Chips hold their shape in the oven and give you defined pools; a chopped bar melts further and spreads more evenly through the dough. Neither is wrong, it's a texture preference. Cheap white chocolate with a high vegetable fat content can seize slightly when it hits the batter, a proper baking white chocolate with cocoa butter listed on the label folds through more smoothly.
Why This Recipe Skips the Fridge
Most of my sourdough cookie recipes rely on a fridge chill to firm up the butter and stop the dough spreading too fast in the oven. With frozen fruit folded in, that becomes a problem rather than a solution.
A dough resting in the fridge for an hour or more gives the raspberries plenty of time to thaw, and thawed raspberries bleed juice straight into the surrounding dough. You end up with pink-streaked cookies, a wetter dough that spreads further than intended, and soggy patches around the fruit rather than distinct jammy pockets.
Scooping before freezing solves both problems in one move. Portioning the soft dough into individual cookies and freezing those, rather than chilling the whole bowl, chills the butter fast enough to control spread while the raspberries never get the chance to thaw.
Smaller mass freezes faster than a single large bowl of dough would, so the two-hour freeze does in each individual cookie what a fridge chill can't do for the dough as a whole. They go from freezer to oven still frozen solid, so the juice stays contained inside each raspberry until the heat of the oven releases it in place, not through the dough around it.
Expert Tips for Success
🧈 Watch the pan, not the clock, when browning the butter. Golden flecks and a nutty smell mean it's ready, a few seconds past that and it's burnt. Cool it completely before creaming with the sugar, 20 to 30 minutes at room temperature or 10 to 15 in the fridge. You do not want to add frozen raspberries to a warm dough.
🥄 Whisk the discard in by hand, not with the mixer. A balloon whisk combines it fully without developing extra gluten, which would make the cookies denser and chewier than intended.
⚠️ Stop mixing as soon as the streaks of flour disappear. Overmixing at this stage is the main way people end up with tough cookies instead of a soft, bakery-style crumb.
🍫 Fold in the white chocolate first, the raspberries last. Toss the raspberries in flour or cornstarch and fold them in quickly, straight from the freezer, so they don't have time to start thawing in a warm bowl.
💧 Use a proper 3 tablespoon (45ml) scoop. It's what gets you eight even 75g cookies with the timings in this recipe. A smaller scoop means more cookies and a shorter bake, so adjust if you're using a different size.
🥶 Don't shape the dough by hand, and tidy portions with cold or damp hands if needed. The dough is meant to be soft at this stage, that's not a mistake. Warm fingers melt the butter at the surface and the raspberries start to thaw, which shows up later as flatter, less defined edges.
🍇 Keep the raspberries whole rather than chopping them. More cut surface means more contact with the dough and a higher chance of bleeding, even frozen.
❄️ Freeze until solid, not just chilled, before baking. The two-hour minimum matters, but past that the timing is flexible: frozen dough balls hold for weeks in an airtight container, so there's no need to bake the whole batch at once.
👀 Judge doneness by how the cookies look, not the timer. Ovens vary, and baking from frozen adds another variable. Golden edges and a puffed, soft centre are the cues that matter.
💥 Too puffy or not spread enough? Give the tray a drop. As soon as they're out of the oven, drop the tray from about 20cm onto a folded tea towel on the worktop. It knocks the air out of the centre and cracks the top, so you get that crinkled, bakery-style finish instead of a dome.
Recipe FAQs
This happens when the raspberries start to thaw before baking, usually because the dough sat at room temperature too long during mixing or scooping, or the freeze before baking wasn't long enough to keep them solid. Tossing the berries in flour or cornstarch helps absorb some moisture, but the real fix is speed: mix, scoop and freeze without letting the fruit warm up in between.
It isn't recommended for this recipe. Fresh raspberries are softer and release juice as soon as you fold them in, which makes the dough wetter and more prone to spreading and bleeding. Frozen berries hold their shape through mixing and scooping, then release their juice in place once they hit the oven.
The most likely cause is that the dough wasn't fully frozen solid before it went into the oven, only chilled. Check that the browned butter was completely cool before you creamed it too, warm butter creamed with sugar will always spread further. A hot oven running below temperature can also be a factor, so it's worth checking yours with an oven thermometer if spreading is a repeated problem.
Substitutions & Variations
- Dark or milk chocolate work in place of white if that's what you prefer, use the same weight.
- Other frozen berries can replace the raspberries, but stick to ones with a similar moisture level, blueberries are a safe swap; chopped strawberries release too much liquid and will make the dough wetter than this method is designed for.
- Active, bubbly sourdough starter can stand in for discard in equal weight. The tang will be slightly milder, discard tends to taste more sour than a freshly fed starter because the acids produced by fermentation have had longer to build up without new flour to feed the yeast, but the texture and rise barely change either way.
- For a bright variation, add the zest of half a lemon to the sugar before creaming, it lifts the raspberry without competing with the browned butter.
Storage & Make-Ahead
Unbaked dough balls are the better make-ahead option here: freeze them solid on the tray, then transfer to an airtight container or freezer bag for up to two months, and bake straight from frozen whenever you want fresh cookies. This is genuinely useful if you want warm cookies on a weeknight without doing any of the mixing that day, or if you'd rather bake two or three at a time instead of committing to all eight at once.
Baked cookies keep in an airtight container at room temperature for 3 days. Note though that the edges are at their crispest on day one and soften a little as they sit.
To freeze baked cookies, cool completely first, then store in an airtight container for up to three months. Thaw at room temperature, or give them five minutes in a low oven to bring back the crisp edges, they won't taste freshly baked straight from the freezer.
More Sourdough Discard Cookies
If sourdough discard cookies are becoming a habit, Sourdough Discard Chocolate Chip Cookies are the classic version worth keeping in rotation, and Sourdough Turtle Cookies are an even better version of those. For more ways through a jar of discard in cookie form, have a look at some of our favourites below:
Raspberry and White Chocolate Sourdough Cookies
Equipment
- Light-coloured saucepan, for browning the butter
- Balloon Whisk
- Kitchen scale I highly recommend weighing your ingredients
- Large cookie scoop, 3 tablespoon / 45ml capacity
Ingredients
- 75 g (⅓ cup) unsalted butter
- 70 g (⅓ cup) granulated sugar
- 70 g (⅓ cup) light brown sugar packed
- 1 large egg yolk
- 80 g (~⅓ cup) sourdough discard 100% hydration, unfed
- 130 g (1 cup + 1 tbsp) all-purpose flour (plain flour)
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
- ¼ teaspoon fine salt
- 100 g (½ cup) white chocolate chips
- 60 g (scant ½ cup) frozen raspberries kept frozen until the last possible moment
- 1 teaspoon flour or cornstarch (cornflour) for tossing the raspberries
- flaky sea salt for topping (optional)
Instructions
- Brown the butter in a light-coloured pan over medium heat until foaming, golden and nutty-smelling. Tip into a bowl straight away to stop it cooking further. Cool completely to room temperature before the next step. Give it a good 20-30 minutes, or speed it up in the fridge for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally so it doesn't set in a lump. Warm butter here means a slack, hard-to-handle dough later, and it's the last thing you want touching the frozen raspberries.
- Beat the cooled brown butter with the granulated and brown sugar for about 2 minutes, until it looks grainy but well combined.
- Add the egg yolk and whisk for another 2 minutes, until thickened.
- Whisk in the sourdough discard gently with a balloon whisk. Don't switch to a mixer here, you don't want to develop gluten.
- In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking soda and salt. Fold into the wet mixture just until no streaks of flour remain. Stop as soon as it's combined.
- Fold in the white chocolate.
- Toss the frozen raspberries in the extra flour or cornstarch, then fold them into the dough quickly and gently, straight from the freezer. Don't let them sit out, and handle them as little as possible so they stay whole.
- The dough at this point will be soft, this is normal since it hasn't been chilled. Don't shape it by hand (especially warm hands). Use a large cookie scoop, about 3 tablespoons / 45ml capacity, to portion the dough directly onto a parchment-lined tray, spaced apart. Aim for roughly 75g per portion, weigh your first scoop or two and adjust slightly if needed, you should get 8 portions in total. Scooping rather than rolling keeps handling to a minimum, which matters with a dough this soft.
- Freeze the tray uncovered until the dough is solid, 1.5-2 hours. If freezing longer than a few hours, transfer the portions to an airtight container or freezer bag once solid. Can be baked straight from a 2-hour freeze or held frozen for weeks.
- When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Bake straight from frozen for 16-18 minutes, until the edges are golden and the centres are puffed but still soft. Go by how they look rather than the clock, frozen dough with frozen fruit can behave slightly differently batch to batch.
- If your cookies look too puffy or haven't spread enough, as soon as you take the cookies out of the oven, drop the tray from 20cm height onto a folded kitchen towel on a kitchen worktop - this creates that signature cracked tops.
- Optional: sprinkle with flaky sea salt as soon as they come out of the oven.
- Cool on the tray for 5-10 minutes before moving to a wire rack.
Nutrition
Susie says
I had no idea you could use sourdough discard for cookies. Yum!
Ieva Greber says
Thanks, Susie — discard cookies are a bit of a revelation once you try them!