The Best Dark Chocolate Orange Snickerdoodle Recipe
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It’s been a very long time since he asked, but this recipe is for my brother-in-law. He once had an orange snickerdoodle beer, and he asked me to bake him some cookies with those flavors. I baked a batch for his birthday, and then I failed to actually share the recipe with anyone.
The past couple of years, when his mom asks what cookies he wants for Christmas, he asks her for those. Since I have never written the recipe down, I’ve never really had a source to send to her. I always just tell her to add orange to her snickerdoodle recipe.
So, let’s get this recipe on the internet finally, huh?
Start with Basic Orange Snickerdoodle Dough
Let’s start by prepping the base dough for our orange snickerdoodle cookies. Before we even bring in dark chocolate, we need to infuse tons of orange flavor into these cookies.
So, get a nice large orange and zest it completely. Then, juice it. Set aside the zest and the juice.
For the dough, we’re using a stand mixer because it makes this easy. Start by creaming together softened, room-temperature, unsalted butter with pure cane sugar and packed light brown sugar.
You can always use granulated sugar in place of pure cane. The difference is that pure cane sugar hasn’t been bleached with bone ash. I use it because I sometimes do vegan bakes, and it generally seems like a cleaner choice.
Add eggs, some of your orange juice, a bit of the zest, and vanilla extract to the creamed mixture. The eggs are going to bind everything and add body. Everything else adds flavor!
To finish the dough add flour, cinnamon, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt. I prefer to sift these in together just so there are no large clumps of flour. Also, I use baking soda and cream of tartar for leavening because it works the best for this recipe. There’s probably something scientific to do with the orange juice and baking soda reacting.
But today is not the day I dig out my old chemistry book… we’re just baking cookies, and this was the test batch that worked the best. HA!
Why Dark Chocolate and Orange Go Together
Now, before we fridge that dough, we’re chopping good dark chocolate and folding it in. It may seem weird to you, but let’s talk… dark chocolate, orange, and cinnamon are a blessed trio.
First off, have you ever gotten a chocolate orange in your Christmas stocking? They’re good, but if you get the dark chocolate one, it’s WOW! Dark chocolate is a little bit bitter and not overly sweet. Then orange is a little sour and not overly sweet. They combine powers to be the perfect amount of sweet, sour, and bitter. It’s complex and fun!
Then, you add cinnamon to this mixture and now you have spicy warmth, too. These three flavors together are so nice together, you’ll be remaking this recipe all holiday season!
As a quick note, I prefer to use chopped chocolate for this because then you get a lot of different-sized chocolate bits and it’s more fun to eat. However, dark chocolate chips work really well, too. There’s no real difference in the end quality, in my opinion.
The Secret to a Perfect Snickerdoodle Coating
Now, we’re going to fridge that dough for a quick hour just to set the butter up a little. While that is chilling, we need to make the orange cinnamon-sugar coating. You’ll take the remainder of your orange zest and mix it up with the cinnamon and sugar.
But here’s my little secret.
We’re going to blend it! Using a small blender cup, like a Nutribullet, we’re going to blitz our mixture. This is going to do a couple of things.
It’s going to break up the orange zest into much smaller bits. Once the zest is broken up more, the oil disperses more thoroughly into the rest of the sugar mixture.
Blitzing the mixture also pulverizes the sugar crystals into a finer texture that more evenly mixes with the cinnamon and orange zest. Once everything is about the same size, you don’t end up with some cookies fully coated in just cinnamon or just sugar (which is always fine, but it’s just not as good, you know?).
Forming Your Dark Chocolate Orange Snickerdoodles
Then, you’ll scoop your dough right into the mixture and toss the balls to get them coated. For this recipe, I preferred the cookies made without rolling the dough balls between my hands.
I found that they had a nicer texture when the surface wasn’t totally smooth. You end up with a craggier surface with more nooks and crannies to hold the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Then the coated dough balls will go on your lined cookie sheet and baked.
The Dark Chocolate Orange Snickerdoodle Toolkit
Here are the tools you’re going to need to get your snickerdoodles in the oven today:
- Stand Mixer with a Paddle Attachment
- Small Bowl for Cinnamon Sugar
- Sheet Pan
- Silicone Baking Liner
- Microplane Zester
Comment below if you have questions, concerns, or opinions. And tag me @ellejayathome on Instagram or Twitter if you share pictures from any of my recipes. I love to hear from you!
Dark Chocolate Orange Snickerdoodles
Equipment
- Stand mixer with paddle attachment
- Sheet pan and cooling rack
- Parchment paper or silicone baking mat
Ingredients
Snickerdoodle Dough
- 1 cup unsalted butter softened
- ¾ cup light brown sugar packed
- ¾ cup pure cane sugar
- 2 large egg room temperature
- 2 Tbsp orange juice
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 2 Tbsp orange zest
- 2¾ cups all purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp cream of tartar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1½ cup chopped dark chocolate
Coating
- 2 Tbsp ground cinnamon to coat
- ½ cup granulated sugar to coat
- 1 Tbsp orange zest
Instructions
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the butter and sugars. Once it's creamy and smooth (about 10 minutes), mix in the eggs, orange juice, orange zest, and vanilla.
- Sift together the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt. Mix thoroughly into the dough.
- Fold in the chopped dark chocolate.
- Refrigerate the dough for at least an hour.
- Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
- Scoop out 2 Tbsp-sized balls. Roll the balls between your palms until you have nice, smooth spheres.
- In a bowl, mix together more orange zest, cinnamon, and sugar for your coating. My secret with the coating is to put the zest, cinnamon and sugar in a Nutribullet blender and pulse for 30 seconds. It gets extra fine and coats everything better.
- Roll each ball in the coating mixture.
- Place on a lined baking sheet 2-inches apart. Bake them for 12 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes on the sheet. Move to a cooling rack and allow them to cool completely.
