Chocolate Orange Shortbread Cookies

This is a fast and delicious bake – the chocolate orange segments are a decadent optional extra and nicely set off the buttery, crisp shortbread. You can also go vegan by substituting butter for vegan spread, oat milk for dairy milk.

Enjoy! 

Ingredients

60g caster sugar

120g salted butter, softened

170g plain flour

4 tbs cocoa powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp milk

Zest of one medium size orange

One Chocolate Orange

Equipment

Large baking tray

Baking parchment

Kitchen scissors

Large mixing bowl

Wooden spoon

Citrus zester/fine grater

Measuring Spoons

Circular cutter (diameter 6cm, 2.3 inches)

Rolling pin

Small sharp knife

• Line the large baking tray with baking parchment.
• Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius fan (338 degrees Fahrenheit fan).
• Cream the butter and sugar together in the mixing bowl.
• Add the flour, cocoa, salt, milk and orange zest and mix until damp crumbs form. Gather the crumbs together into a ball (they should stick together nicely) and turn out on the work surface. Knead very briefly to turn the crumbs into a dough. 

• Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out to a thickness of just less than a centimetre and stamp out rounds. Gather the scraps into a ball and re-roll and cut again. You will make around 15-16 circles in total.
• Use the small sharp knife to make shallow lines in the top of each circle. I made one shallow cut across the diameter, and more lines radiating from the centre like bicycle spokes (only make bicycle spoke lines on half of the circle).
• Place the circles on the baking tray and bake for 15 minutes.
• While the biscuits are baking, open the chocolate orange and separate the chocolate segments.
• Remove the shortbread from the oven and place a chocolate segment on top of each biscuit so that the heat melts the chocolate and fixes the segment into place.
• Store in our Tala set of 3 Christmas Tins until ready to serve.