Orange Tea Cookies

I can’t remember ever making a cookie with orange in it before, so I was excited to make these Orange Tea Cookies! I’ve used orange juice in frosting before (we always use the Juice Frosting recipe when making Rich Flavor Christmas Cookies), but not actually in the cookie!

This is the second “tea cookie” I’ve make from Cookies by Bess. I was curious to know what a “tea cookie” actually is, so I googled it. I didn’t get anything specific about the origin of tea cookies or even a definition. What I did get was a bunch of recipes for English Tea Cookies, Lemon Tea Cookies, Earl Gray Tea Cookies, Almond Tea cookies, and even a few recipes for Tea Cakes.

After reading a bunch of recipes and making two of Grandma Bess’ tea cookie recipes, I’ve determined that tea cookies are basically small, almost dainty cookies. Tea cookie flavors can be anything from spicy to fruity to sugary. They can be a drop cookie, shaped cookie, and/or cut out cookie. A sandwich cookie or just any plain old cookie. In the end, I realized that a tea cookie can be any type of small cookie…that goes well with tea ?

Both of the tea cookie recipes I’ve made from Cookies by Bess (Orange Tea Cookies and Rolled Apricot Tea Cookies) are sandwich cookies which require a good amount to time and patience. I want to add that both of the end result cookies are BEAUTIFUL and completely worth the effort to make.

Because of the time, effort and steps involved in making these Orange Tea Cookies, I rated this recipe 3-stars for cookie difficulty.

After getting all my ingredients and utensils together, I got started creaming the butter and sugar.

Once I got the dough ready, I came to the part in the recipe where it says to “chill dough for a few hours”. I wish I had realized this when I decided to make these cookies! It was pretty late in the afternoon and waiting a few hours would put me smack in the middle of dinner…so I ended up chilling the dough overnight.

Before completely cleaning up for the day, I made the Orange Frosting. Oh boy, what a great frosting! It kept me motivated to make the cookies the next day because I couldn’t wait to taste the orange frosting together with the orange cookies!

This recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of orange juice. I really like using orange juice in frosting, it gives such a nice and citrusy sweet flavor and a nice creamy texture. This recipe was no exception! I will use this Orange Frosting recipe with other cookies for sure!

The next day I pulled the cookie dough out of the refrigerator and got set up to start rolling out the dough. The recipe says to “roll dough thin on a floured board…” After getting the dough ready and flouring my board, I got started with my rolling pin.

I realized right away that I was glad I let the dough firm up overnight. This dough, even after adding flour for rolling, continued to stick to the floured board. I ended up using another ½ cup or more of flour before I was all done rolling and cutting out the cookies.

Because I was rolling the dough thin, I checked after each roll with the rolling pin to make sure the dough hadn’t stuck to the floured board. It did stick quite a few times, so I picked up the dough, added more flour to the board, and then turned the dough over to continue rolling. This added time to the process, but in the end saved me time because the extra flour helped when moving the cookie cut outs to the cookie sheets.

A good friend of mine gave me a new, decorative rolling pin for a gift a while back. I thought this was the perfect time to try it out. I used my normal rolling pin to roll the dough nice and thin. Then I rolled over the dough one more time with the decorative rolling pin. The decorative rolling pin needed to be heavily floured to make sure the dough didn’t stick. This resulted in more of a stencil decoration versus a one that was actually imprinted on the dough.

I used a round cookie cutter as mentioned in the recipe.  In my opinion, my round cookie cutter was too big for this type of cookie, so I experimented a little and cut some rounds and then cut the rounds in half. This seemed to work out well and gave a more bit size cookie.

As I was cutting the rounds in half, I realized I have other small cookie cutters that would look great! The flower and heart ones in particular really added a nice spring time touch.

I baked the cookies between 6 and 8 minutes. I wasn’t sure what they were supposed to look like when done, so I tried to bake them just enough to keep their buttery color and not turn brown. At 6 minutes the cookies seemed a bit under done, so I kept them in the over for another minute at a time. 7 – 8 minutes seemed to be the right amount of time.

I also noticed the flour stencil from the decorative rolling pin disappeared as they baked. So  disappointing ☹ I’ll try to use the rolling pin with a heartier/firmer dough next time to make sure the decoration imprints into the dough.

The cutting out and baking took quite a while. Once I was done, I had a nice assortment of cookies ready to frost!

The cookies are thin and therefore work great for a sandwich cookie! I put a thin layer of frosting on before sandwiching them together. The sandwich isn’t too thick, so you get a perfect blend of the buttery and orange cookie along with the sugary sweet orange frosting.

After frosting and sandwiching the cookies, I realized they looked exactly the same as the unfrosted cookies. Pretty, but I thought they needed a little something else to really make them POP.

I got out my powdered sugar and started sifting sugar on every other cookie. This added just the right touch! I think the softness of the powdered sugar next to the buttery plain cookies looks amazing!

These cookies are exactly what I think of when I think of “tea cookies”. The orange flavor is nice compliment to the buttery and crisp cookie. I would pair these cookies with tea and just about anything else!

If you love orange, you will love these cookies!  Try them with your favorite tea or just try them, you won’t be disappointed 🙂

Do you have a favorite tea cookie recipe?  If so, I’ve love for you to share it with me!  You can send the recipe and pictures by going to our Join The Community page.

XXOO!

Janet

 

 

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