Dark Chocolate and Orange Crinkle Cookies (Whole Wheat or Gluten-Free)
Deep, fudgy dark chocolate crinkle cookies with orange zest and vanilla extract, rolled in confectioner's sugar. Whole wheat, all-purpose, or gluten-free flour work equally well — genuinely addictive holiday cookie.
Ingredients
- 1 cup whole wheat flour or use all-purpose or Bob's gluten free baking flour. All equally interchangeable.
- 3 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
- ½ tsp. baking powder
- ⅓ tsp. salt
- 1 cup or 8 oz. dark chocolate chips
- ¼ cup Nutella or your favorite hazelnut spread
- 2 Tbsp. olive oil
- 3 large eggs
- ⅓ cup granulated sugar
- ⅓ cup light brown sugar
- 1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
- 1 ½ Tbsp. orange zest
- 2 Tbsp. freshed squeezed orange juice or use Cointreau
- 1 cup confectioner's sugar
Instructions
- In a large bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
- Place the dark chocolate chips, olive oil and Nutella in a medium-sized microwave-proof bowl and place in the microwave. Heat on intervals of 20 seconds, stopping to stir the mixture and continuing until all the chips are melted. Set aside.
- Using a mixer, beat the eggs and sugar until creamy, about 3-4 minutes. Add the vanilla extract, orange zest and orange juice or Cointreau, mixing well.
- Gently fold the chocolate mixture into the egg mix, followed by the flour mixture. Mixing just until no dry ingredients remain. Do not overmix.
- Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for at least an hour or until the mixture hardens to a fudge like texture.
- Place the confectioner’s sugar in a small flat bowl.
- Preheat oven to 350 ° F. Line two large cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- Spoon tablespoon portions of the dough into the confectioner’s sugar, rolling the dough into sugar coated balls. Place the balls about 2 inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets.
- Bake in the oven for 10 minutes or until cookies have slightly flattened out. 10 minutes gives you a cookie with a brownie-like texture, for crisper cookies, leave in the oven 2 to 3 minutes more.
- Cool the cookies on the cookie sheets for several minutes before removing to a wire rack to finish cooling.
- Enjoy and remember to share because it is easy to be tempted to keep these for yourself.
Notes
NUTRITION (PER COOKIE, APPROXIMATE, BASED ON 24)
Calories ~144 | Protein ~2.2g | Total Fat ~5.8g | Saturated Fat ~2.5g | Carbohydrates ~22g | Fiber ~1.3g | Sugar ~17g | Sodium ~52mg Caveats:- Calculated using orange juice rather than Cointreau. If you use Cointreau instead, expect a very small bump in calories and sugar.
- These cookies get rolled in a full cup of confectioner's sugar for coating, and this estimate assumes all of it ends up on the cookies. In practice some stays in the bowl, so actual sugar per cookie may run slightly lower than shown.
- Contains tree nuts - hazelnuts (Nutella) — not suitable for tree nut allergies.
