Buttery, teeny and crumbly melt-in-your- mouth Orange Nutmeg Shortbread Cookies are a festive addition to your treat platter this holiday season!
Orange Nutmeg Shortbread Cookies
I made these perfect little one-bite stars for a cookie exchange one year. They were such a huge hit they have gone into rotation ever since! Since they were so small however, I made a shortbread trio. Read on to see what that was all about!
Our Orange Nutmeg Shortbread Cookies are a delicious one-bite cookie that literally melts in your mouth making it hard to stop at just one!
Christmas Cookie Exchange
I’ve talked about cookie exchanges a few times in this blog. When time is not on our side and December insanely busy (talking from experience here) joining a cookie exchange really helps so much with your holiday baking!
We also love to prepare cookie platters for friends and these dazzling little treats are always the star of the platter!
Cookie Shapes oh my!
While we love to cut out stars, you can use any cookie cutter you wish! The whole point of these dainty little sparkly stars is that they are small and can easily be popped into your mouth. So if you are going to choose another shape we recommend you stick with something smaller.
You will notice in my pictures the photo of two cool cats taking a selfie! I admit to being obsessed with Christmas cards and can never have too many! In some of my holiday photos you will see other cards I have loved over the years.
Shortbread Trio for the Cookie Exchange
One year I made a trio of shortbread cookies for our annual cookie exchange. They included these magnificent stars, Cherry Walnut Shortbread Cookies and our Whipped Shortbread Cookies. Since we are only supposed to give a dozen cookies to each person, I ended up giving six of each and maybe a few extra stars since this recipe makes a ton!
This is a fun one to make. The only tip I have is to let the cookie dough firm up in the refrigerator before you cut the cookies and after. They just bake better.
Other must try cookie recipes!
If you made this recipe tag Wanda Baker on Instagram and hashtag it #bakersbeans or #wandabaker
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter softened
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 2 tsp orange zest or the zest from one whole small orange
- 1/4 - 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
- pinch salt
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup icing sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 300 F (150 C).
- In large bowl beat butter with sugar until fluffy. Stir in cornstarch, orange zest, nutmeg and salt until blended. Add flour one-third at a time, stirring each addition in before adding the next until all gone.
- Between waxed or parchment paper roll out dough on a cookie sheet or cutting board to 1/2 inch thickness. Put on a plate or small cutting board and refrigerate for minimum 30 minutes.
- Using floured star cookie cutter (1 1/2 inch), cut out shapes, re-rolling scraps and cutting out cookies as you go. Place about 1 inch apart on parchment lined baking sheets.
- Put one baking sheet on top and one on the bottom thirds of oven baking for 6 minutes than switch and rotate pans. Bake for another 4 minutes. Switch & rotate pans again. Watch your cookies at this point and check regularly as every oven is different. When the bottoms brown slightly take them out.
- Let cookies cool in pans for about 5 minutes then transfer to racks. Using a sprinkler/shaker/colander shake/sprinkle the icing sugar all over the cookies while they are sitting on the rack and while they are still warm. I find this helps the icing sugar adhere to and stay on the cookie.
OMG we couldn’t stop eating these cookies. So good!
These were huge hit! We had them out for Christmas Eve and well there are not left!
These cookies were so sweet and tasty. We had fun making them too!
Made these for our class Christmas party and they were a huge hit. Thanks for sharing!
What a great idea to cut these into stars and add the orange zest. Delicious!
I love anything sweet with orange and this shortbread looks amazing.
My family loved these cute little star shaped cookies! They were delicious.
Incredible!!! I made these shortbread cookies to bring to my cousin’s house for holiday party. It was a huge hit. Thanks for sharing!
My kids really enjoyed these!! They had so much fun! They enjoyed the flavor combination, too!
Make them into nugget which was less time consuming; had to bake them for longer. Delicious. Added some chopped nuts too
Sounds like you made it work by creating nuggets! We make them every Christmas, so good!
hii do think we could make the dough the night before to bake early morning or would it be better to make the dough in the morning and bake them the same day?
Hi, sorry I didn’t get the notification about this message! Yes, you can make the dough the night before and bake in the morning. I have done this with several of my cookie recipes!