Chocolate Orange Cookies

When I think of chocolate and orange together, I think of those chocolate covered orange jelly sticks.  The slight give of the chocolate as the outer shell is broken.  The chewy, tangy orange center that mixes with the chocolate as it melts.  Heaven.  While growing up, my Grandma gave us a box of those orange jelly sticks pretty much every Christmas.  I loved them.  It made me smile to see the tell-tale (or is it tale-tell?) wrapped package sticking out of the top of the stockings that she prepared.  We knew we would have that treat along with all sorts of miscellaneous tiny packages wrapped tight in paper and tape so it was hard to open- things like a roll of quarters, a package of gum, little knick-knacks, etc.  Why am I talking about Christmas?  I really don't know.  Just got off on a tangent of memories associated with those chocolate orange sticks. 

So, when I saw these cookies on the Six Sisters' Stuff Blog, I knew I had to try them.  They were really good.  Nice and easy to make, they reminded me of orange sticks with every bite.  When I first saw the recipe, I noticed that the orange frosting didn't include orange zest.  I usually prefer to use zest in anything orange, lemon, or lime flavored because the zest just makes it so much better.  And less.......fake....artificial tasting for lack of a better explanation.  But.....I didn't have any oranges, and I didn't want to go to the store just to buy an orange to use for its zest.  So, I tried the frosting just the way the recipe said... and it was good!  I did use the good Watkins extract, so that might have helped, but I ended up being ok with orange frosting without orange zest!   I also chose to not dip mine as deep into the chocolate ganache.  Mainly just because I had piped the frosting on using a star tip--- and they looked rather messy when I dipped them in deeper.  I thought that they might be time consuming because of baking, frosting, and dipping, but I was surprised at how fast they went.  If you like the flavor combination of chocolate and orange, try out the Six Sisters' recipe.  You can find it here.  I hope you like it, too!