Homemade Orange Milanos

Pepperidge Farm’s Orange Milanos are one of the only store bought cookies I will eat, in fact I’ll eat the whole bag by myself! Orange and chocolate are one of my favorite flavor combos. I hadn’t thought about baking them myself until I saw a recipe on Pinterest for them and decided to give it a try, I made a few adjustments and they turned out perfect. They are super simple and if you like to bake you probably already have all the ingredients at home. If you want them to turn out perfect you should use a piping bag with a 1/2 in round tip otherwise if you’re not too worried you can use a plastic bag and cut a corner off.

INGREDIENTS:

COOKIE

1 1/2 c soft butter

3/4 c sugar

1 1/3 c powdered sugar

8 egg whites

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp orange zest

2 2/3 c all purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

FILLING

2 c semi sweet chocolate

2 tbsp nutella

2 tsp butter

1 tsp orange extract

INSTRUCTIONS:

preheat oven to 400 degrees F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside

in the bowl of a stand mixer using the paddle attachment beat butter, sugars, for 5 minutes on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add the egg whites, vanilla extract and orange zest, mix until combined, add salt and flour (a little at a time) until incorporated.

scoop mixture into your piping bag and pipe cookie batter in 2 in lines spaced 3 in apart giving them room to spread as the bake. Bake one baking sheet at a time for 10 minutes (they should be golden around the edges) then allow to cool a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

In a double boiler place all the filling ingredients to be melted and mixed together. When completely melted remove from heat. When cookies are cooled, spread the melted chocolate mixture on the flat side on one cookie and using a second cookie, sandwich together.