Christmas Calendar 2015 - Cookies with chocolate, orange peel and walnut

It is time to get started working in my kitchen. I will start with an easy thing such as cookies, as you can not have a Christmas without cookies ! The perfect thing about cookies is, that they take very little time to make. And you can easily prepare the cookie dough in advance, freeze it down for later use. So you later on during the busy Christmas days easily can serve freshly baked cookies for guests or bring newly baked cookies as hostess gifts. Well I am ready for you to come around :-)

I have located this cookie recipe in a newspaper magazine (Livsstil week 48/2015). I decided to replace the dark chocolate with milk chocolate, as I do not like dark chocolate ! And instead of hazelnuts I decided to use walnuts, as I again prefer walnuts over hazelnuts.

The cookie dough is very soft, so I prefer to cool it down in the refrigerator, so I can cut the dough with a knife. Doing it this way means, that you avoid to mess up your fingers with cookie dough.

Adjust the baking time in the oven to your preference for either soft cookies or cripsy cookies.

Cookies with chocolate, orange peel and walnut: - 30 cookies

• 150 g milk chocolate - medium - finely chopped
• 75 g walnut - medium chopped
• 150 g butter - soft
• 150 g sugar
• 1 organic orange - only the peel finely chopped
• 1 egg
• 200 g (cake) flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

1. Whip the butter, sugar and egg with an electrical beater into a homogeneous mass
2. Mix in the orange peel, flour and baking powder and whip again.
3. Mix in the chopped chocolate and walnut with spoon.
4. Divide the soft cookie into two portions. Place each portion of dough on a piece of baking paper. 
5. Roll the cookie dough into longer string. Cover each cookie string in baking paper.
6. Place the cookies dough cold, either in the refrigerator or freezer.
7. Heat the oven to 190'C
8. Cut the firm cookie dough into slices of 1 cm.
9. Place the cookies on a baking tray covered with baking paper.
10. Bake the cookies in the upper part of the oven at 190'C for 15 minutes.
11. Cool down the cookies, before storing them in airtight containers.