Chocolate Orange Cookies

You can make the dough and chill it for up to several days in advance of baking; after that, you’ll have the most flavoursome, crumbly textured cookies you can imagine.

Step 1

Preheat your oven to 190C/170C fan/Gas 5. Lay a torn off piece of baking paper (non-stick greaseproof paper) on a baking tray.

Step 2

Beat together your butter, sugar and zest in a large bowl with a wooden spoon until paste-like. If your butter was in the fridge, zap it in the microwave to soften. Then, add your eggs and blossom water and until smooth.

Step 3

Add your flour, baking powder and chocolate chips and stir everything together. Feel free to use your hands if it gets tough, but don’t overwork it and definitely don’t knead it. The minimum possible working at this point is good.

Step 4

At this point, you can wrap and chill for up to 2 days. If not, tear into 12 roughly equal lumps and position on your baking tray with plenty of space between each.

Step 5

Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until just light brown at the edges (they’ll still be really soft in the middle when properly baked). Overbaking will give them a snappy texture, whereas underbaking will mean they are floppy. Neither of these are necessarily bad things.

Top Tip:

Once you’ve made your dough, form it into a sausage shape then wrap in cling film and chill for up to 2 days. When it comes to baking time, just slice your sausage, black pudding style.

Enjoy!