As a creature of habit, I go down the fruit aisle of the supermarket and mindlessly pick up bags of oranges. Despite the fact that I have oranges at home that have not yet been eaten, the bags still end up in my basket. So I accumulate my collection of oranges until the time comes when i actually have to use them up. Juicing citrus fruits is my favourite way to use them up; using the juice for curds or simply just for juice. But today is a cookie-kind-of day. The rain beating upon my windows calls for an extravagantly gooey and chocolatey cookie. Indulgence is key. And since I have an orange going spare, that only means one thing: soft-baked Chocolate Orange Cookies. But giant. We want them giant right?
INGREDIENTS
- 150g unsalted butter
- 75g light brown sugar
- 75g golden caster sugar (normal caster sugar will do)
- 1 egg
- 180g plain flour
- half tsp baking powder
- 100g dark chocolate, chopped*
- 100g milk chocolate, chopped*
- 1 orange, zest + 1 tbsp juice
* you can use 200g of any chocolate. I also find chopped chocolate just so much more indulgent and better distributed than chocolate chips!
METHOD
1. Place your chocolate in the fridge before you do anything and preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsius.
2. Begin by beating together the softened butter and sugars. I personally like to go old school with this and use a wooden spoon, but by all means save yourselves the arm ache and use a stand mixer or electric hand-whisk. You are looking to fully incorporate the ingredients to a smooth beige paste.
3. Crack your egg into a small bowl and beat. Pour the egg into the sugar/butter mixture and continue to beat. Try to pick up the speed a little here to encourage emulsification to ensure the butter and egg comes together.
4. Put your plain flour and baking powder in a sieve together and sift into the wet mixture.
5. Gently fold your flour until half incorporated.
6. Besides eating the cookies, this here is my favourite bit! Get your chocolate out of the fridge and chop. I like to start at the edge of the bar and chop diagonally so that I have a variety of different sizes, but chop how you like! Chopping cold chocolate is so satisfying! Add to your floury cookie dough.
7. Add your orange zest to the dough mixture and the juice.
8. Continue to incorporate until no flour is visible; we don't want to overwork the cookie dough. You should find your chocolate and orange is now evenly distributed.
9. Roll into small balls. WARNING: small balls = large cookies. I only put 4 balls on a tray to bake. Bake in batches if necessary. Bake for 10-12 mins until just browning on the outside. The cookies will be very soft still fresh out of the oven, but allow them to cool for 5-10 minutes before handling them.
10. Well go on then! Eat them!
45% of all fruits and vegetables are wasted worldwide. And citrus fruits are up there. A tip of mine is to look at what you already have and use that as a guide to choose what you bake. So if you have some oranges that need a little love, why not put them in a cookie? Because we all love a good cookie, and if you don't... need I say more? From prep to bake, you could be sitting cosily with a blanket, a hot chocolate, and freshly baked warm cookie in hand, in less than 25 minutes! The monster cookies will have you reaching for the cookie jar all day... turning into The Cookie Monster yet? Oh and any scraps of unused food, orange skin etc, make sure you put in your food recycling bin!
Thank you for reading!
Gina ~ The Noo Noo Project