Wheat Orange Cookies

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BM#81 Week 4 Day 3

I simply love baking. The cookie bug has caught up with me and I have been baking cookies nearly everyday. Don’t get me wrong…. not the same recipe but different recipes which have been in my recipe book for eons. I baked some of the cookies for my relatives in Nairobi and they loved them. So here is the first recipe. Meera, bake these for your family, they are very easy. I have not taken out the cup measurement for the butter as transferring the soft butter to a cup is a messy job. I prefer to use the weighing scales for this. However, if you get 250g butter packets like we do here in Kenya, its very easy… half of that is required for the recipe. For all my local friends, I am taking orders for the cookies and muffins as I cannot bake all these goodies and have them on my own. 

Updated: 26/10/2017
Since I posted this recipe, my cookie business didn’t last that long. I guess people prefer to buy the cheap processed, chemical infused, palm oil filled cookies. They found my home made cookies too expensive. If I’d been living in Nairobi then I probably would have a successful cookie business. People in Mombasa are just too conservative. Whether people buy my cookies or not, that has not stopped me from baking them as there’s nothing more comforting than a glass of cold milk and a cookie. I don’t like to serve coffee without a cookie. So most times, you’ll find a jar full of cookies in my home.

Anyway that’s water under the bridge. I’ve baked these particular cookies countless times. I just love the flavor of orange in them. I’ve also sometimes added nuts, raisins, other dried fruits and just recently when I baked these to give away as Diwali presents I added dried cranberries. I’ve sometimes used tangerine instead of orange. Its only this time when I baked them that I remembered to take fresh photos…  I felt so ashamed with the first click I had taken, it was just really bad!

Go on bake these easy peasy tasty cookies and no don’t look for the first click… its deleted…its history:)

WHEAT ORANGE COOKIES
Yields about 30 pieces

2¼ cups wheat flour (atta)
125g butter
1 tsp grated orange peel
½ cup sugar
½ tsp soda bicarbonate (baking soda)
½ tsp baking powder
¼ cup fresh orange juice

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
2. Sieve the flour with the baking powder and soda bicarbonate.
3. Cream  butter and sugar till it is pale in colour and fluffy.
4. Add the orange juice and grated peel. Whisk well.
5. Add the flour and using your hands make  a dough.
6. Divide the dough into 30 parts or so.
7. Roll each part into a ball. Flatten it a bit between your palms.
8. Place on a greased baking tray.Leave half an inch gap between the cookies. Repeat steps 7 and 8 with the remaining dough.
9. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or till the edges begin to brown.
10. Leave the cookies on the hot tray for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes remove them from the tray and let it cool on a wire rack.