Reader’s Recipes: Orange Cream Chips

Reader’s Recipes: Orange Cream Chips ~ the classic holiday combination of chocolate and orange shines in these simple drop cookies!

Hi all — welcome to my Reader’s Recipes series of holiday cookies. I’m going to be sharing YOUR family recipes here on Saturdays from now until the New Year. Thanks to all of you who’ve sent in recipes for me to try.

Today’s Orange Cream Chips were submitted by Dawn,  who lives in Tuscon Arizona.   These cookies feature one of my favorite holiday flavor combos — orange and dark chocolate, so I had to give them a try.  Dawn says “This is a recipe I acquired in college, 23 years ago. I used to baby and house-sit for a professor, and he and his wife gave me a batch of these cookies at Christmas one year as a thank you. I liked them so much I got the recipe and have been making them ever since. They aren’t too sweet, and the texture is wonderful. Everyone I’ve made them for loves them, and my daughter, who is now in college, loves them. In fact, she was just talking about how we need to make them for this year”

Flavoring baked goods like cakes and cookies with citrus is a challenge, but it can be done.  In Dawn’s recipe there is orange juice concentrate, and zest, and while the orange flavor is subtle, it lingers on the palate due to the oils in the zest.  Adding the dark chocolate makes this a sophisticated twist on a chocolate chip cookie, perfect for the holidays.

I sprinkled the tops of the cookies with more zest just to hint at what’s to come.  The anticipation is half the fun with these cookies — who could resist a combination of juicy citrus and deep chocolate?  I’m not sure where the combo originated, but the two flavors make a happy holiday marriage.

We used to get those foil wrapped chocolate oranges in our stockings, and I loved them, but  I think these cookies are even better, and you don’t have to worry about whether you’ve been naughty or nice.

Thanks Dawn, the cookies are delicious and my kitchen smells amazing :)

notes ~

• Have your ingredients at room temperature…the eggs, cream cheese, and butter, it will make a light, smooth batter without lumps.
• I used the zest of a whole orange, which is a little more than the recipe calls for.  You can also use as touch of pure orange extract if you want to emphasize the orange flavor.
• Don’t try to use a box grater for zesting citrus fruit.  Use a micro-plane, or rasp, it makes it much easier and you will get lots more zest.  Grate off just the orange part, the white part is bitter.
• 6 ounces of chocolate chips is approximately a heaping cup.

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