Orange Cookies with Real Oranges – No hand mixer is needed

This simple recipe shows you how to make orange cookies with real oranges🍊.

These colorful orange cookies are perfect for garnishing your Christmas dinner table, and brightening your day throughout the year!🎄

If you want an easy kid-friendly dessert recipe that can bring your family a lot of fun, you have just found it! 👏

You don’t even need a hand mixer to make these delicious and beautifully holiday-looking orange cookies.

All you and your kids need to do is mixing everything up with a spatula. Both you and your kids will enjoy this fuss-free family activity.

Fresh vs Dried Orange Slices

While most of the orange cookie recipes just use orange zest or orange juice, we are going to use real orange fruit to make the cookies more beautiful and flavorful.

The only problem with using orange fruit is that fresh oranges can’t be stored for too long. Therefore you will need to keep these orange cookies in the fridge. They can last for 3 to 4 days in an airtight food storage container. 

The cookie part will taste crunchy on day 1, and become softer from day 2 due to the moisture from the orange. I actually prefer cookies with a softer texture. So I usually enjoy these orange cookies one day after they are made. 

– Can I used dried orange slices instead?

Yes, you can. If you want to store these orange cookies for a longer time or if you prefer crispier cookies, you can substitute the fresh orange slices with dried orange slices.

And orange peels are perfectly safe and healthy to eat. If you don’t mind the mild bitterness from orange peels, you can leave them on when making dried orange slices.

To make dried orange slices, you simply slice an orange into 1/8-inch-thick slices, and air fry the orange slices at 225°F (110°C) for about 30 minutes. If you don’t have an air fryer, you can also bake them on a wire rack at 300 °F (150°C) for about 20 minutes. The orange slices will still be soft at this point of the time, because we will bake them one more time with the cookie dough.

You pipe the cookie dough around the air fried or baked orange slices, then bake them at 320°F (160°C) for 30 minutes. You don’t need to take flip the orange cookies if you are using dried orange slices. 

Orange cookies made with dried orange slices are crispier, and can be stored at room temperature for 2 weeks. 

Use Softened Butter for Making Orange Cookies

Almost all the cookie recipes request softened butter. Have you ever wondered why?

When room temperature softened butter is combined with dry ingredients, such as sugar and flour, they will together for many small air pockets inside the dough. These air pockets give the structure to your cookies, and make your cookies fluffy and hold their shapes.

If you use melted butter instead, the dough will be too soft to hold its shape when baked. Therefore, you will end up getting some flat and chewy cookies.

Here Mel did an interesting experiment comparing cookies made with room temperature softened butter, way too soft butter, and melted butter. Check it out if you are interested to see the results.

How to Soften Butter?

I usually cut the butter into ½-inch small cubes, then leave them on my countertop for 40 minutes (during summer time) to 1 hour (during winter time) until I can easily squish it between my thumb and forefinger.

As introduced by land o lakes, you can also shorten the butter softening time by shaving it. Specifically, you just “use the largest holes on a box grater to create a pile of freshly grated butter shavings that will soften in a matter of minutes”. I haven’t got a chance to try this method yet, but it totally makes sense to me!

It is not recommended to use a microwave to soften the butter when a recipe calls for “softened butter”. Because you will very likely to get half liquid half solid butter. Neither of them are suitable for baking cookies.

If you happen to over soften the butter, you can keep it in the fridge until it’s hardened, then soften it again.

Room Temperature Egg White

When you take the butter out from the fridge to soften it, remember to crack an egg. You can keep the egg yolk in the fridge for future use, and put the egg white in a bowl at room temperature. I will just leave the egg white on my countertop by the butter for an hour.

Since we are not going to use a hand mixer, we’d better use room temperature egg white, which is more easily to be blended into the batter.

What’s more, when the cookie dough is too cold it will be too firm to pipe. Therefore, we should avoid using cold ingredients directly from the fridge.

White Chocolate Dipped Orange Cookies

Melted white chocolate and sprinkles are optional but highly recommended for this recipe, especially if you decide to leave the orange peels on.

The sweetness of white chocolate can well balance the sour taste of the oranges (or the bitter taste from the pith). So I’d prefer white chocolate over dark chocolate for this recipe.

I used white chocolate chips, you can also chop a white chocolate bar into small pieces then melt them.

You can the white chocolate chips over hot water bath – Place chocolate chips in a bowl, and set the bowl in hot water, gently stir the chocolate chips until melted. Or you can use a microwave to melt them – see detailed steps below.

Garnish with rainbow sprinkles before the chocolate set.

I also made a melted snowman cookie. To make it, you just quickly place a marshmallow on the cookie while the white chocolate is still wet. Then draw the eyes with an edible marker and make more details with rainbow sprinkles to make it look like a melted snowman.

Equipment you will need:

• Kitchen scale
• Large mixing bowl & spatula
• Baking sheet & parchment paper
• oven

INGREDIENTS List: 

– For the orange cookies

• 2 oranges
• 150 g unsalted butter (softened)
• 65 g powdered sugar
• 23 g egg white (room temperature)
• 180 g cake flour (can be substituted with all-purpose flour)

– For the decoration (optional)

• 100 g white chocolate (You can use white chocolate baking chips, or chop a white chocolate bar into small pieces)
• rainbow sprinkles

Step-by-step INSTRUCTIONS 

1. In a large bowl, mix softened butter and powdered sugar with a spatula (or a hand mixer) until well combined.

2. Add the zest of 1/2 orange (about 1 tsp) to the butter sugar mixture, mix with a spatula until well combined.

3. Add room temperature egg white to the mixture, mix with a spatula for about 5 minutes until well combined. *Make sure that all the egg white has been absorbed into the mixture.

4. Sift cake flour into the mixture, mix with a spatula for about 5 minutes until the dough looks smooth and there is no dry flour in the bowl.

5. Place the dough into a durable piping bag with a large star tip (I used tip 853, you can also use tip 846 or 826). If your piping bag is thin, you can use 2 layers of piping bags to prevent them from breaking.

6. Preheat the oven to 320°F (160°C).

7. Peel and slice 2 oranges into 1/4 inch slices. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper, lay 10 slices of oranges on the baking sheet.

8. Pipe out circles of cookie dough around the orange slices. Let quarter of the cookie dough overlap with the outline of the orange slices, so that they will stick together after baked.

9. Bake the cookies at 320°F (160°C) for 30 minutes. Take the baking sheet out from the oven, flip the orange cookies over (they are soft now, so make sure you flip them gently).

10. Send the orange cookies back to the oven to bake at 320°F (160°C) for 10 more minutes.

11. Transfer the orange cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

– For Decoration (optional)

1. Microwave 100g white chocolate baking chips at 50% power for 1 minute. Remove the bowl from the microwave, stir with a spoon. If the chocolate has not melted thoroughly, continue to microwave at 50% power in 15-second intervals, stir between each interval until all the chocolate chips are melted.

2. You can spread a thin layer of melted chocolate over the center of the cookies, or dip a corner of each cookie into melted chocolate. Optionally decorate with some rainbow sprinkles or other colorful candies of your choice.

3. Place the chocolate-dipped orange cookies on parchment paper until chocolate is set.

My other orange recipes you will also like: