Melt-in-Your-Mouth Orange Shortbread Cookies

When I think of orange short­bread cook­ies, I pic­ture those swirly cook­ies that show up in hol­i­day tins around Christ­mas­time. As a kid, I liked them, but there were so many oth­er cook­ie options that they did­n’t real­ly hold my interest.

My Orange Short­bread Cook­ies are melt-in-your-mouth deli­cious. They’re sim­ple and they’re not over­ly sweet. The hint of cit­rus is what sets them apart and makes them so spe­cial. The crisp/soft cook­ie just sort of melts away as you chew. And you’re left with a lin­ger­ing citrus‑y sweetness.

As I have got­ten old­er, I’ve dis­cov­ered that the not over­ly sweet part has so much more appeal, for me. There are so many sweet and rich foods swirling around us over the hol­i­day sea­son. Some­times it’s just too much. I have found these lus­cious Orange Short­bread Cook­ies to be sweet relief! 

I hope you’ll enjoy them too.

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How to Make Orange Shortbread Cookies

Start by zest­ing two or three oranges to get 2 Table­spoons of zest. Save the oranges in the fridge, to eat or juice, lat­er on. They’ll keep in the crisper draw­er for 2 or 3 days with their zest missing. 

The rest of this recipe is so sim­ple. You won’t believe how easy Orange Short­bread Cook­ies are to make!

Cream togeth­er the but­ter, sug­ar and orange zest. You can mix these by hand or in a stand mix­er. I made quick work of it in my *mix­er.

Now, add the flour and corn­starch and begin com­bin­ing them with the but­ter mix­ture. At first, it’s going to look crumbly and sandy as the dough starts com­ing togeth­er. Keep mix­ing. You will see larg­er clumps of smooth dough start­ing to come togeth­er. It will seem dri­er than reg­u­lar cook­ie dough and that’s right. You did every­thing perfectly!

Baking and Decorating Orange Shortbread Cookies

To form the cook­ies, roll the dough into 1 1/2 inch balls. Place them on a greased or lined cook­ie sheet.

Next you need to press them down until they’re about 3/8 inch thick. You can use the tines of a fork, the bot­tom of a glass, even a meat mal­let to press the cook­ies and cre­ate a design. I had a snowflake insert from an old cook­ie cut­ter and I used that for my press. Get cre­ative. I’ll bet you have things in the house that would make cute designs.

It is com­plete­ly option­al, and not part of the recipe, but I like to sprin­kle the pressed cook­ie dough with sparkling sug­ar at this point. It adds just a touch of sweet­ness and crunch to the cook­ie and cre­ates a “spark­ly” appearance.

Once the orange short­bread cook­ies are pressed out, bake them for 20 min­utes at 300°. 

When they come out of the oven, they’ll still be pret­ty del­i­cate. I set the tray on a cool­ing rack and let it be while I get a new pan of cook­ies ready for the oven. By the time I fin­ish, the cook­ies are ready to be trans­ferred from the tray to the cool­ing rack.

These are best served com­plete­ly cool and are the per­fect com­ple­ment to a cup of tea or hot cocoa. In my opin­ion, Orange Short­bread Cook­ies are not just for Christ­mas­time. I think they would be an excel­lent “every day” cook­ie, since they are less sweet and are real­ly so versatile.

I hope you’ll enjoy the easy recipe for Orange Short­bread Cook­ies as much as I do! Hap­py Tues­day, my friend!

More Cookie Recipes from the 12 Days of Christmas Cookies Event

Here are three more DELISH cook­ie recipes from our 12 Days of Christ­mas Cook­ies blog­ger event.

• Ger­man Spritz Cook­ies, from Arlene, at Flour on My Face
• Dou­ble Choco­late Chip Cook­ies, from Lois, at Walk­ing on Sun­shine Recipes
• Choco­late Chip Kiss Cook­ies, from Lenny, at Fat Dad Foodie

And, if you’re look­ing for even more cook­ie recipes to add to your hol­i­day reper­toire, check out my recipe for these yum­my Soft Chewy Gin­ger Cook­ies.

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