Chocolate Orange Shortbread Cookies

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Smooth and rich dark chocolate encases these delicately flavored orange shortbread cookies! Simple flavors and traditional technique are what make these dipped shortbread cookies shine. Not overly sweet, but completely indulgent all the same, these cookies taste much like those candy chocolate oranges you can find this time of year. Though I do love those treats, these cookies were inspired from a different kind of Christmas orange.

I spent a lot of time with my paternal grandmother growing up. My parents divorced when I was very young. My father didn’t want his visitation rights with my sister and I, but his mother stepped in and took them, ever hopeful that she’d be able to convince him of the error of his ways and that someday he’d want to see us. It never did work out the way she’d hoped.

Though she had many flaws as a person, she was an excellent grandmother. Boredom was never allowed on our weekends with grandma. Weather permitting, she’d have us outside plodding through fresh plowed fields in search of arrowheads and pottery shards, fishing or frog hunting, traipsing through the woods as she pointed out every wild flower by name, mushroom hunting and foraging for berries, one time she even cut young green branches from trees and strung us up bows with little whittled arrows to practice archery.  If the days had to be spent inside there was always some sort of little project she’d have lined up. T-shirts and puffy paint, needlework or embroidery, and when all else failed to hold our attention, an Atari.

At Christmas time, my sister and I were the only grandchildren to have Christmas stockings from Santa at grandma and grandpa’s house. In my naivety, I assumed it was because we were the favorites, now I realize it was an attempt to compensate for the lack of any effort put forth from my father. Every year we knew what would be in our stockings; apples, oranges, nuts and gum.

One year I asked her why we got those things and she told me those were the very same treats she’d gotten in her stocking as a little girl. To me they were very dull things for Santa to bring to a kid, but now I love that she passed this little bit of her childhood and her own family’s tradition on to me. The smell of fresh peeled orange mixed with aroma of a real Christmas tree brings a smile to my face as I think about her love of Christmas oranges and is the main reason why I keep a bowl full of them through the winter months. Small traditions like these, though our children may never know the origins, are what keep us tied to our roots and heritage. And it was with thoughts of her that I lovingly created this recipe for dark chocolate dipped orange shortbreads.