Dark Chocolate Orange Cookies

I wish you could taste these! I wish you could smell these! I wish you could smell my house when these were baking! Little drops of heaven!
These are by far the best flavour of cookies I have tried baking yet.

The recipe is from this blog. Turned out to be beautiful crisp biscuits with oodles of orange flavour. Last time around I had made 2 dozens and fell short ;) so this time I made 6 dozens! Yes, you read that right - 72 cookies!

Ingredients -

2 cups whole wheat flour
2/3 cup dark cocoa powder
1/2 tspn salt
1/2 cup + 2 tbspn sugar
zest of 2 small oranges
1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
1 tspn vanilla extract
juice of 1/2 small orange

Procedure -

Mix flour, cocoa powder and salt and keep these dry ingredients aside.
Zest the oranges and mix well with sugar. Incorporate the zest well, this would release the orange essential oil into the sugar and results in a beautiful orange sugar (by itself this can be used on top of desserts and other goodies).
Add butter and whisk well till pale and fluffy. Work hard here! Ensure the mix is really smooth. Add vanilla extract and mix the orange juice.
Add the dry ingredients in two batches, each time slowly incorporating it thoroughly. This mixture would now form a soft cookie dough.
Shape the dough into a rectangle between two parchment sheets or wax paper. Flatten with a rolling pin to 1/4 inch thickness.
Place the dough in a refrigerator for at least 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 170C. Line the baking trays. Cut the rolled out dough into cookies using cutters and bake for 18 to 20 mins or till edges are crisp. Remove from the oven and let it cool on the baking tray for 5 mins. Move to a wire rack to cool completely.

Adrika pondering on deep questions whilst devouring cookies. My dainty princess(read - really fussy eater) immediately ate 5 of these out of the oven!

Enjoy!