Chocolate Orange Spiced Cookies

We wanted something to take up to my sister’s, and probably eat on the four hour journey up there, so bite-sized cookies were ideal. I am mildly in love with chocolate oranges so any baked goods with that flavour combo are right up my alley.

Ingredients (makes around 50 small cookies)

100g icing sugar

120g butter

2 egg yolks

40g dark unsweetened cocoa powder

120g plain flour

2 tsps vanilla extract

1 tsp cinnamon

1 pinch nutmeg

Pinch salt

Zest of orange

For drizzle

Juice of the orange

Icing sugar

In a large mixing bowl cream the butter then sift the icing sugar, spices and cocoa and mix until fluffy.

Add the egg yolks, vanilla, salt and orange zest and combine everything together.

Sift the flour and stir the mixture together until the flour is well incorporated.

Spoon the dough into two large pieces of cling film and roll into logs. Place in the fridge to chill. The recipes I looked at suggested at least 2 hours but my mixture was still very soft after that long so I would suggest leaving them to chill overnight.

Preheat the oven to 180⁰C. Remove the logs from the fridge and use a sharp knife to cut slices around 5mm. Alternatively, roll the dough out and use a cookie cutter. Place the cookies onto baking trays lined with baking parchment. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until firm, then cool on a wire rack.

While the cookies are cooling mix the juice of the orange with some sifted icing sugar until it forms a glue like consistency. Drizzle over the cookies then eat!

Note: My mixture was really runny, almost cake mixture like, so I worked in extra plain flour until the dough became manageable. This made the cookies quite dry, although fine with a cup of tea. I originally thought my mixture was so sloppy because I didn’t chill the dough for long enough BUT I only realised as I was writing this that the recipe requires ‘two egg yolks’…I definitely just shoved two whole eggs in without noticing the egg yolk part so I think this might be to blame. Lesson of the day, as always with me, READ THE FLIPPING RECIPE.