Chocolate-Dipped Orange Shortbread Cookies

Melt-in-your-mouth Chocolate-Dipped Orange Shortbread Cookies served with tea will instantly transport you to England and make you feel like royalty.

Is there a word that describes being homesick for a place you’ve visited?

After some research, I can’t seem to find one word that sums it up. That’s how I feel about Ireland, although to be fair, I did live there for four months while attending the University of Limerick.

I feel like I talk about Ireland all the time, mainly because studying abroad was a big part of my life, but I never talk about traveling while overseas.

It was so easy to hop on a plane and travel to Europe for the weekend, but given my small college budget, I just visited next door to England, Scotland, and Wales, collectively known as Great Britain.

Great Britain was very similar to Ireland for two reasons: One, everyone drove on the left side of the road (even after four months, you still don’t get used to that) and two, everyone loves tea.

In fact, I was never a big tea drinker until after that trip and bought a box of Earl Grey tea upon my return to the U.S.

Fast forward seven years, and I’m still drinking tea. Not religiously like I do with coffee, but drinking tea is a time for me to relax, whether it’s an afternoon pick-me-up, on the couch after a long stressful day, or in the evening chatting with a friend.

And you can’t have tea time without a British-inspired treat like my Chocolate-Dipped Orange Shortbread Cookies.

Shortbread cookies are very traditional melt-in-your-mouth British biscuits you serve with tea. I’d say cookie, but the British refer to cookies as biscuits.

As I was brainstorming flavor combinations, I immediately thought of my favorite cookie in the whole wide world (that isn’t chocolate chip!) – Jaffa Cakes.

Never heard of them? That’s because I can’t find them in the U.S. They are little sponge cookies topped with chocolate and filled with some orange jelly. I bet I can devour a whole box in under five minutes!

Since they aren’t available to buy around here, I opted to incorporate the chocolate and orange flavors into my shortbread.

Although they are a completely different cookie than Jaffa Cakes, they were still pretty darn good.

The best (and also the messiest) part of making these cookies is dipping them into chocolate. You’ll need a narrow yet deep enough container to dunk your cookies for maximum chocolate coverage.

I used this narrow coffee mug and only needed to melt two ounces of chocolate.

However, if your container is a bit wider, you may need to melt up to four ounces. Otherwise, the chocolate won’t be deep enough to dunk your cookies.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been seven years since studying abroad. I swear it feels like yesterday, and every day I yearn to go back and take it all in again.

Well, if I can’t go there, then I might as well bring it here, right? Shortbread cookies and tea.

Now I just need to turn on BBC and pretend I’m back in my university housing unit again.

 

More Tea Time Cookie Recipes

Chocolate Chip Cookie Brownie Bites
Coconut Cookie Bars

Spiced Hazelnut Linzer Cookies

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Biscotti

Soft Pumpkin Sugar Cookies

Red Velvet Sugar Cookies