Orange Sugar Cookies. 6.8.22

 In keeping with the baking substitutions and space cadet theme, I also made some orange sugar cookies.  These were the same as the lemon sugar cookies that were so tasty previously, except I used an orange for zest and juice, instead of a lemon.   I don't have any butter on hand so I substituted shortening in equal amount for butter, and again used some butter extract for flavor.

Well.  

The cookie dough was less moist than before and wouldn't roll into balls.  Just kind of flaked apart. I formed them as  best I could and baked a batch.

Well.

They didn't spread out like before.  The cookies did rise and expand.   Plus, they were no where near done in the expected twelve minutes, and I wound up baking five more minutes.   They were halfway between a drop cookie and those Christmas cookies that are rolled in powdered sugar.  So, I decided to make rolled cookies out of the second half of the dough.  I rolled them out and used a cookie cutter to make the second batch.  I've never made cookie-cutter cookies before, so I can now congratulate myself on another milestone LOL.

The last one got pressed with a pie dough press just for fun.

They won't get thrown out in the trash.  Not as good as those previous lemon cookies.  The orange flavor is subtle.  I drank the left over juice, and really, the juice wasn't that strong orange flavor either, and the zest wasn't as zesty as with the lemons.  Texture wise, these were light, had a nice moist, tender "crumb", especially the drop ones.  The rolled out cookie cutter cookies would have benefited from a frosting.   They weren't bad either but didn't make me jump up and down and dance with joy.

Afterward, I realized I had the oven at 350 F instead of 375 F.  Oops.

Maybe I'll go back to the drawing board and try again, except with butter as the cookie recipe originator intended.  Bake at the correct temperature.  The orange flavor is there,  but subtle.  More zest?  Or orange extract?