I had the idea to make these cookies a few weeks ago. I call them intense orange-chocolate-almond cookies. That's quite a mouthful for a title but it sums them up. They look like ordinary chocolate chunk cookies but they're filled with a strong burst of orange flavor and embedded with bits of almonds, surrounding by that dark chocolate. Some special chocolate bars provide a shortcut to achieving those flavors but to boost it further, I added fresh orange zest and almond extract to the cookie dough.
I snuck in a little bit of whole wheat pastry flour and you really can't tell one bit. For half of my batch, I also added additional chunks of toasted almonds.
I got the idea to make these cookies after seeing a cookie recipe using chopped Toblerone chocolate bars. Now, Toblerones and I go way back and they have a very special place in my heart. I think they're pretty perfect on their own and while I'd be thrilled to taste them in a cookie, I got to thinking about what other chocolate bars would work and hold up well baked in cookie form. Right away, I thought of these...
I'll restrain myself from calling the Lindt Intense Orange chocolate bars one of my favorites because, while I do love them, anyone who knows me well knows I am a chocoholic and, thus, my list of favorites is rather long. That said, they are really delicious both in flavor and texture. The thin dark chocolate bar has bits of orange peel in it that really makes it deserving of that "intense-orange" description. Plus, there are slivered almonds embedded within them. I mean, what better combination is there than chocolate and orange, and with nuts as a bonus (well, okay...I could think of others like, say, chocolate and mint)!
I was confident these chocolate bars would be great in a cookie, and they really were! The flavors stay intact and you get texture with the pieces of chewy orange and almond slivers already provided by the chocolate bar. To heighten the flavors, I added orange zest and some almond extract. I divided my cookie dough in half and added toasted, chopped almonds to one portion of the dough. We actually preferred the ones without the additional almonds more since it really allowed the orange and dark chocolate flavor to shine.
If you like the combination of dark chocolate and orange, I think you would enjoy these very flavorful cookies. My family and I really did!
My 7-year old called this my "fractured recipe". You see, his second grade class just finished a fairy tale unit at school. They've been reading fairy tales and writing their own versions, basically creating "fractured fairy tales" with their own spins on the classics. When we sat down to eat these cookies and I told him how I started off with a chocolate chip cookie recipe that I really liked but changed ingredients and added different components to alter the flavor, he said "Cool! It's like a fractured recipe!" It gave me a good laugh, and I think he's absolutely right in his description. I don't often "fracture" recipes, if you will, but I'm so glad I tried this idea. It took me just a little outside my box and led to a rewarding result!
My 7-year old called this my "fractured recipe". You see, his second grade class just finished a fairy tale unit at school. They've been reading fairy tales and writing their own versions, basically creating "fractured fairy tales" with their own spins on the classics. When we sat down to eat these cookies and I told him how I started off with a chocolate chip cookie recipe that I really liked but changed ingredients and added different components to alter the flavor, he said "Cool! It's like a fractured recipe!" It gave me a good laugh, and I think he's absolutely right in his description. I don't often "fracture" recipes, if you will, but I'm so glad I tried this idea. It took me just a little outside my box and led to a rewarding result!
