A snickerdoodle variation

I have had a bit of a hankering to bake snickerdoodles recently, not sure why, I just haven't made any in a long time and thought it would be nice.  I didn't get much baking done over the Christmas period, given our impending arrival Arthur and I mainly spent the holidays sorting out baby things and banking sleep, so the only baking I really did was the Christmas pudding.  I didn't even manage any mince pies!

So yesterday I made snickerdoodles.  If you don't know what snickerdoodles are, they are a doughnutty tasting, cakey sort of biscuit.  Confused?  Give them a bake and you'll understand.  The recipe I use is from Nigella Lawson's 'How to be a domestic Goddess' one of my favourite baking books.

While mixing up the original batch, I had a burst of inspiration.  I was thinking about making a second batch of 'chocodoodles' (where you replace some of the flour with cocoa), but I've never been a huge fan of them, I like the originals better, then I had a thought.


I've not really had any cravings through pregnancy, there have been things that I have really enjoyed and at times things that I really didn't (4 months sugar hating, not fun!) but no actual must go out and get or I'll gnaw your arm off cravings.  One thing I have been really enjoying lately is the combination of orange and chocolate, not sure if this is at all attributable to pregnancy or just a seasonal thing as it's quite a Christmassy flavour, but either way I am really enjoying orange and chocolate together.  So i thought I'd add some orange essence instead of the vanilla essence and have orange chocodoodles.

But that didn't quite hit the spot, so still creaming my butter and sugar I kept thinking. I have done a fair amount of exploring the range of orange chocolate available recently and have some favourites.  Firstly the darker the chocolate the better, and then some brilliant sparks have combined the orange chocolate with other wonderful things, such as in this offering from Lindt:

Dark chocolate, orange and almond.  Yum Yum Yum!  So taking this as inspiration I resolved to swap out some of the flour for ground almonds, use orange essence instead of vanilla and add dark chocolate chunks rather than use cocoa as I always think the cocoa makes them go a little dry and who doesn't love chunks!

I am really pleased with the finished batch (no surprise really as they have chocolate and orange, it's a current winner!).  In the end I switched half the flour for an equal amount of ground almonds, swapped vanilla essence for orange, missed out the salt and added about 60g of dark chocolate chunks.  I still rolled them in the same sugar/cinnamon mix, mostly as I had loads left from the original batch but I think the flavours go really well together.  They are less doughnutty that the originals, slightly softer but just as moreish!

I am choosing to call these Christmas Doodles (I know I'm too late!) as the combination of flavours really is very Christmassy and they are my belated Christmas baking!

I am entering this post in this months Tea Time Treats, a monthly blog challenge hosted by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Jane from The Hedge Combers.

This month's challenge is eggs, eggs, eggs and is hosted for the first time by Jane.

This recipe has one egg in it, I know that may not seem like much for a challenge entitled 'eggs, eggs, eggs' but it does represent out current egg situation!  

Our hens have not been laying for over a month now, thanks to a shocking display of weather (they really do not like the rain) so if we want eggs we are reduced to buying them (shock horror!) something we have pretty much not done since the girls arrived as even over the winter last year we were getting around one egg every other day which kept us fulfilled in egg needs.

Now, however we find ourselves very short in the egg department and woefully unused to having to buy them, so while egg rationing is not strictly in place, I didn't feel like committing to an egg heavy recipe without my feathered friends to back me up.