Chocolate, orange and cranberry cookies

It's a new month and therefore a new We Should Cocoa Challenge. December is hosted by Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog and she chose orange as the ingredient for this month. Chocolate and orange is quite a classic pairing and a few ideas ran through my head - cupcakes, cakes, brownies, cookies.... I finally decided that I would create my own recipe in the form of a cookie. I absolutely love cookies, probably more than cake! My inspiration came from this lovely bag of Orange Nice Spice Puddles from Hotel Chocolat - they were part of the Christmas Collection Gift Bag that I won from a giveaway hosted by purelyfood - thank you so much! :)

So on to the cookies. Well it's a basic sugar cookie with the addition of orange zest, fresh orange juice, dried cranberries and the orange puddles. The result - a really lovely and festive cookie. You can clearly taste the individual flavours which complemented each other well. The cookie was light with a slight crunch and smelled amazing! I'm definitely making these again. You can substitute the chocolate puddles for chopped chocolate or chocolate chips - I'm thinking bits of Terry's Chocolate Orange next.

 adding the orange zest 

 I made sure every cookie had at least 1 chocolate puddle :)

I'm also submitting this to Vanessa's Let's Make Christmas Event as it would be a great Christmas gift

And finally to a cookie bloghop from mikesbaking #cookielove

An original recipe by bakingaddict

Makes 22 cookies of size shown

125g butter

75g sugar

1 egg

Zest of 1 orange

Juice of 1/2 orange

150g plain flour, sifted

110g chocolate puddles as shown here

50g dried cranberries 

• Preheat the oven to 180C.
• Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. 
• Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
• Add the egg and mix well.
• Add in the zest of 1 orange and juice of 1/2 an orange.
• Sift in the flour and mix well.
• Finally stir in the chocolate puddles and dried cranberries with a spatula. 
• Use a small ice cream scoop to place cookies on the baking tray spaced apart. 
• Bake for approximately 12-15 minutes until lightly brown around the edges.
• Allow to cool on the tray for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely.