Candied Orange and Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’m a very risk-averse person. Maybe it’s something to do with being a lawyer, but I’m overly cautious and any risks I do take are usually heavily calculated towards producing good results. Which is a long-winded way of saying I need to be a bit more adventurous… with life in general, and cooking in particular. I do believe, truly, that in cooking, as in life, the biggest failure is to be so crippled by the fear of it that one does not try anything new at all. And so, here I am, valiantly trying to stand up with the courage of my convictions and not let the fear of a badly chosen recipe or (even scarier) making up a recipe, stop me.

Dark chocolate and orange is hardly an earth-shatteringly new flavour combination – quite the opposite – it is so firmly entrenched in the canon of classic flavour pairings, “like champagne and caviar”, that I think there should be a song about it too. And yet, I have never come across a recipe for a cookie that uses the combination! I’ve trawled through the books of all the legends of the food industry in vain.

I’ve had this idea for a cookie that combines dark chocolate with orange for a long time, but have been too nervous to try it out. What a waste of ingredients it would be if it didn’t work!!! *insert Munch Scream emoji* especially the precious dark chocolate chips that the long-suffering husband faithfully lugs back to Sri Lanka every time he has to travel to Sydney!!! However, with the deadline for a new post looming and two kiddos who are insatiable at tea time (oh who am I kidding, it’s not just them), I thought now would be as good a time as any to take the plunge.

I used a basic oat, butter and brown sugar cookie recipe and dolled it up with deep, dark chocolate chips, hand made crystallized orange (more about that process coming up in a later post) and toasted cashew nuts. And my, oh my, what a transformation! I felt like the fairy godmother of cookies pronouncing, “You SHALL go to the ball” when I produced these decadent, simply beautiful cookies. The cookies, when cooked until just golden at their crinkly, ruffled edges, are slightly crunchy on the outside, with a middle that is still comfortingly chewy. Nuggets of deep, dark chocolate, combined with the zingy, translucent, candied orange and the toasted cashew made for a cookie that was definitely on the “grown up” cookie list (though the kids had no problem scoffing them down either), with a really sophisticated, elegant taste.

I’m so excited at my risk paying off, and it is so refreshing to have done something new that I’m quite giddy and light-headed. Pass the smelling salts please.