It's Time to Embrace Blood Oranges

Blood oranges are a fruit rarely mentioned or explored, but I've always liked them since they're unusual but tasty. I got the idea a while ago to try making blood orange sugar cookies, and then remembered that my favorite recipe for sugar cookies comes from 1,001 Low-Fat Recipes: Quick, Easy, Great-Tasting Recipes for the Whole Family , edited by Sue Spitler and Linda R. Yoakam.

Their recipe actually calls for lemon juice, so I easily substituted that with blood orange juice. The cookies did not come out a scary dark red color, but were actually an odd tinge of green. The picture I have below is not my best, since we were enjoying them in our living room after dinner. When I tried making them at first, they kept deflating, so I put them in the fridge overnight in the hopes that they would bake better that way.

They did. The trick with these cookies is to keep them cold as long as possible, wait until the oven is ready to put them on a cookie sheet, and to let them cool before you handle them. But once you eat them, they're delicious! They're even better the day after. They are perfect cookies to have with tea or coffee, and they're very light.


Blood Orange Sugar Cookies
4 tbsp. Earth Balance Natural Buttery Spread or Margarine
1 cup Sugar
1 Egg
Juice from 2 Blood Oranges
1 1/2 cups Gluten Free All Purpose Flour Mix (rice-based)
1/2 tsp. Xanthan Gum
1/2 tsp. Baking Soda
1/2 tsp. ground Nutmeg

In a small bowl, combine gf all purpose flour, xanthan gum, baking soda, and nutmeg.
In a medium sized bowl, beat margarine until fluffy (this will not take long). Beat in the sugar, egg, and blood orange juice. Once combined, beat in the flour mixture until fully combined. Scrape the sides of a bowl with a spatula so that all of the batter is together. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat the oven to 375 when you are ready. Once the oven is hot, take out the cookie dough and roll the dough into balls about 3/4 of an inch thick (or however you like) and place on ungreased cookie sheets. Cook for about 8-10 minutes, remove from the oven. Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheets for a few minutes before placing onto wire racks to cool. Once cool, enjoy!