Chocolate cookies with orange curd can be a perfect edible Christmas gift for your loved ones or a delicious treat for Sunday afternoon. They look amazing and taste incredible. You can swap orange cream for lemon or even passion fruit curd.
Oranges, clementines and mandarins are the perfect December trio. I could eat them all day every day! Basically, nobody can stop me! Because of this, I also try to incorporate them into my baking and create that Christmassy feeling right from the very beginning of December.
Last year, I baked the most delicious coconut and clementine treats (you can find the recipe here), but this year I upped my game with these chocolate cookies and orange curd. They are so fragrant that not only your kitchen but your entire home will smell like a Christmas fairy tale.
Tips for perfect chocolate cookies with orange curd
I think this recipe is reasonably self-explanatory and hard to mess up (I promise!). However here are a few tips and tricks to get truly perfect cookies:
- Use room temperature butter – this is essential to get perfect, crumbly cookies. Leave the butter out for at least 1-2 hours before baking.
- The dough needs to be dry – cookies need to have structure and a drier dough will support it.
- Chill the dough before baking – this is a very important step for cookies containing butter. It helps get a better texture and develops flavour.
Recipe swaps for chocolate cookies with orange curd
You can do so many different things with this recipe, but here are some ideas for adaptations:
- Chilling – I like to make the dough the night before. This saves so much time and gives a better texture. If you chill the dough for a long time however, the cookies will have more cracks (just keep that in mind).
- Self-raising flour – you can swap the self-raising flour for plain flour and a teaspoon of baking powder. If you want more even cookies, just use plain flour without any baking powder.
- Orange curd – this is the best part of the recipe (trust me), however, feel free to swap orange curd for lemon, mandarin, passion fruit or any other fruit curd.
Christmas is just around the corner now, and I wish you the most amazing and magical time.
Recipe
Ingredients
Cookies:
100g butter
100g brown sugar
200g self-raising flour
30g cocoa powder
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
Orange Curd:
2 oranges
1 lemon
50g caster sugar
50g butter
2 eggs
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line a baking tray with a baking sheet.
Prepare the cookies:
2. Beat the butter and sugar together until everything is combined.
3. Add the flour, cocoa powder, vanilla extract and a pinch of salt. Mix everything together (the texture will look like breadcrumbs).
4. Gently beat the egg and the egg yolk separately and add them to the cookie dough mixture.
5. Make the cookie balls (keep these all the same size, mine were 40g each).
6. Chill the dough in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
7. Take the cookie balls out of the fridge. Press a teaspoon slowly down into each cookie to make a deep dent – some will crack but that’s OK!
8. Bake the cookies for 20-25 minutes.
Prepare the orange curd:
9. Add the zest of one orange as well as the juice of both oranges and the lemon into a saucepan with the caster sugar and butter. Mix everything together and heat the mixture for a couple of minutes.
10. Beat the eggs in a separate jug.
11. Take the juice mixture off the heat and very slowly, always whisking, pour this mixture into the eggs (this way you’ll avoid scrambled eggs).
12. Pour the cream back into a saucepan and heat it for 10 minutes (always mixing) until it starts firming. If the cream is too runny, add one tablespoon of corn starch.
13. Let the curd cool.
Assemble the cookies:
14. After the cookies have baked and cooled add a dollop of orange curd in the pressed-in centre of each cookie.
