Chocolate orange crinkles

This weekend, the ladies at my house hosted a winter chocolate tea party. There were chocolate cookies, sugar cookies dipped in chocolate, chocolate truffles.. the list goes on. I looked up a recipe for chocolate cookies on Friday night and meant to bake them that night, but I ended up hanging out with a friend instead. Also, it was warm under my blanket. I love the kitchen, but it doesn't have a cuddly fleece blanket to wrap me in.

Saturday morning, I woke up, got out the recipe, got started with the dough.. And then realized it needs to chill for 3 hours before being balled up, sugared and baked. Whoops. I finished the dough anyway and set aside the dough for another occasion. Like most cookie dough recipes, this is a great make-ahead dough.

The dough has lots of eggs, giving it a lovely melt-in-your-mouth texture. The original recipe called for rolling the dough in powdered sugar; I chose to make orange-scented sugar instead. I also replaced a teaspoon of the vanilla with orange to give the cookie more depth. And fine, maybe I wanted to use my zester again. It definitely needs the chill time--since there's no butter in the recipe, the melted chocolate is the only thing that solidifies to give the cookie enough heft to roll into a ball. The last modification I made was using 3 oz semi sweet baking chocolate and 1 oz non sweetened chocolate. Next time, I'll probably split it evenly between semi/unsweetened chocolate.

I made another version of cracked chocolate cookies over Christmas, but I liked this dough better because it was so much easier to work with. The other one (found at Fine Cooking) was delicious, had a more solid final texture, and didn't requite chill time, but the dough was so thick I thought my mixer was going to break.

Go ahead and melt, darlings. I'll be with you shortly.

My friend asked me who gave me the zester for Christmas. I told her, and she responded "I have to write her a thank you card, because these are amazing"

The orange sugar, it glitters!!

Everyone in the pool!

Everyone out of the pool!!!

Nom nom nom...

Chocolate crinkles

Adapted from Betty Crocker

*this dough needs to chill for at least 3 hours*

½ cup vegetable oil
1 oz unsweetened baking chocolate, melted, cooled
3 oz semi sweet baking chocolate, melted, cooled
2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon orange extract
4 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup granulated sugar
Zest of one orange

In large bowl, mix oil, chocolate, granulated sugar and vanilla. Stir in eggs, one at a time. Stir in flour, baking powder and salt. Cover; refrigerate at least 3 hours.

While dough is chilling, mix together the sugar and orange zest, making sure to fully incorporate the zest until all the sugar is tinted orange.

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease cookie sheet with shortening or cooking spray.

Drop dough by teaspoonfuls into orange sugar; roll around to coat and shape into balls. Place about 2 inches apart on cookie sheets.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until almost no imprint remains when touched lightly in center. Immediately remove from cookie sheets to cooling racks.

I'm just throwing in this photo for fun, because I frakking love Seattle AND the Columbia Tower (bottom of the photo). This was taken on Saturday before the tea party, as my friend and I walked around downtown. Love love love.