orange-cinnamon sugar cookies

You know I'm essentially the Cookie Monster, right? C is for cookie that's good enough for me .... uh, I can stop now. But I am the cookie monster. Actually, I think one of my favourite nightgowns ever had a giant Cookie Monster on it. Maybe that was preminiscient.

I have a serious weakness. I'm pretty sure it started when I was little, and my mother would let us have two cookies after dinner (or at anytime - the limit was always two) and she'd sit there with a stack of six. Or ten. So I would be there all questioning why do I not get the cookies? I like the cookies!

I made a million cookies in my childhood. I also probably ate a million cookies. I may or may not have stolen a million cookies. The number of cookie-related crimes I was reprimanded for as a child was slightly excessive. You are looking at (reading about?) a cookie thief. I may have ruined a Christmas exchange one year with my cookie theivery in fact.

Which is all a very longwinded way of telling you that you should not be surprised by the unreasonable amounts of cookie recipes that appear on my blog. If you looked through the recipes, you'd certainly think that all I make or eat is cookies. I promise that this is not true. Really, I promise. It's not true. I eat other things, I bake and cook other things. Today is not going to demonstrate that, however. Not in the slightest. Today I give you more cookies.

This recipe is a basic drop sugar cookie. Nothing fancy, but quite delicious. I get a little bored with sugar cookies, so I do tend to like to up the flavour of them a touch. Get something more interesting going on, so I don't feel as if I'm boring myself.

Orange Cinnamon Sugar Cookies
slightly adapted from allrecipes.com
Makes about 4 dozen cookies. You will want to share.

Ingredients

• 2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves (optional, but cloves + orange? So good.)
• 1 tbsp orange juice (I juiced half an orange which was a little bit more than that)
• zest of 1 medium orange
• 1 cup butter or margarine, room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• Note: I think these cookies would be ridiculously good with 1/2 cup of that being subbed for brown sugar. Depth of flavour, baby.
• 1 egg

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375*F. In medium bowl, wisk together dry ingredients (flour, baking soda and powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves).
2. In large bowl or mixer, cream together butter and sugar until delightfully fluffy.
3. Add egg, orange juice and orange zest to the creamed butter and sugar. Mix.
4. Gradually add the dry ingredients, stirring until dough comes together smoothly. I added them in three batches, gradually decreasing in size. (This is my favourite method).
5. Drop spoonfuls (I used a standard sized cookie scoop) 2 inches across on lined cookie sheet.
6. Bake 9 minutes, or until colour just begins to change. These babies don't go golden or anything (I feel like swapping out some of the white sugar for brown might change that), so don't wait for too much colour change. Let rest on cookie sheet about 5 minutes, then transfer to rack.
7. Enjoy the yummiest. Give some away.