Letting the zest sit in the sugar can help, but I think thoroughly rubbing them together is more important. The way Dorie Greenspan describes it is that the sugar should become moist, take on the color of the zest, and be very fragrant. No matter what recipes suggest, I always do it this way now.
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+1 to this. It’s not about letting it sit - actively rub zest and sugar with your bare fingers.
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Dories BB muffins are my absolute favorite!! Recipe starts with orange zest and sugar rubbed together. Really ups the orange flavor.
I don’t rub – I use a microplane to finely zest the citrus directly into 1/4 - 1/2 cup of sugar before I start. In the 10-15 mins it takes to get everything else ready (including pre-heating the oven), the oils from the zest shreds leach into the sugar (oleo saccharum ie oily sugar). In fact I do this anytime I’m eating an orange, in anticipation of the next orange cake 
.
If you forget or don’t have that time, you can rub the zest into the sugar with your fingers to speed it up.
Almond flour adds the same moisture and texture, you don’t need almond paste for that. The question is whether your almond paste includes almond extract – because you will have to first offset that flavor to get to orange, which is a lot milder.
The Julia Turshen almond cake recipe I linked is very rich and moist from the nut flour, even more so day 2 onwards as it’s an oil cake. If you prefer a butter cake, Alice Medrich has a similar almond cake recipe using butter that you can adapt to orange flavor.
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They look fantastic, but the process sounds really fussy! Your dental hygenist is a lucky duck!
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It’s all my fault, once you give someone homemade cookies, they are ruined …
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I went looking for other Chocolate Crinkle cookies and most refrigerate the dough 4 hours or overnight! This blog compared recipes so I decided I’ll try making the Sofra “Earthquake” cookies, the favorite.
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can’t believe I wasn’t invited to the bake off.!
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Those are beautiful! Dammit, now I want a bagel with a schmear!
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We live near Sofra (Cambridge, MA), unfortunately don’t get there often enough. We love the earthquake cookies! If you try them and convert to weight instead of volume measures for the ingredients, please share! The Soframitz cookbook gives only volume and I just can’t bake without weights these days.
Yours are stunningly beautiful, as always!
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Thank you. The Zoe recipe was such a pain, so sticky. I’m going to try this Sofra recipe as written except I like smaller cookies, 1 Tablespoon and will bake for just
10 minutes. I think the refrigerating overnight will help.
It’s nice making/gifting cookies, so easy to transport.
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Almond cake, courtesy David Lebovitz site. This is a half recipe in a 6x2” pan.
I used the thinly sliced peel from an entire Cara Cara orange that I pulverized with the sugar from the cake in a FP. I continued with the balance of the ingredients in the FP. It definitely imbued the cake with orange notes but I had forgotten how sweet the cake is, it reminds me of the Swedish Mazarin cake that’s on the label of the Odense almond paste box. Thomas Keller also has a version, which I’ve made as well.
I’m not sure, for me at least, that the orange is a positive in this cake. If you happen to enjoy the flavor of almond paste, the cake is fine on its own but with reduced sugar.
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I always fridge cookie dough at least a night, much to the chagrin of my spouse. She likes “now”!
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Yes!! Top tip from Dorie, and I do this for all recipes that call for citrus zest and sugar…
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all this talk of citrus… we got some very good news at work, so I made a celebratory cake. The grapefruit white chocolate from “Snacking Bakes”. I had to use sour cream since my yogourt smelled a bit dubious, but still seemed to turn out OK…
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Interesting that you say this, but I’m going to try it anyway as I love orange and almond in cakes.
I agree about the reduced sugar.
It would be interesting to also try it with pistachios (but no orange).
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Now we’re talkin’! Pistachio sounds like a great idea.
I’m probably an outlier on the orange/ almond paste combo, I imagine if you double the zest it will get you what you’re looking for. The sugar was a bright orange from being pulverized in the processor with the peel.
I should have taken note of your sugar reduction, I also reduced the salt.
I love that cake.
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@Aubergine - I made the Sofra Cookies! I loved them- definitely let the dough rest at least a day in the fridge
Chocolate earthquake cookies from Sofra - 11 min, 30g, https://newengland.com/food/desserts/earthquake-chocolate-crinkle-cookies/
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