Orange Creamsicle Cookies With White Chocolate Drizzle Recipe

Orange Creamsicles have earned their cult icon status for good reason. They're a genius combination of cold, creamy, citrusy flavors conveniently frozen on a popsicle stick — what's not to love? After an 11 year old by the name of Frank Epperson created the popsicle in 1905 by accident, the frozen desserts went mainstream. Some decades, patents, and acquisitions later, the Joe Lowe company introduced Creamsicles in the 1930s.

Still popular today, we've been inspired by the classic Creamsicle flavors of orange and vanilla and made a hybrid dessert: orange Creamsicle cookies with white chocolate drizzle! Since they aren't frozen with ice cream, these cookies don't melt, but they do taste just like the childhood treats we all know and love. Perfect for summer but suitable year round, these delightful cookies come together in less than 30 minutes, so you can keep the recipe in your notes for the next potluck or bake sale.

Since this recipe starts with a soft sugar cookie dough, you'll need a few baking staples: all purpose flour, kosher salt, white sugar, baking soda, and vanilla. From the refrigerator, you'll need two sticks of softened butter and an egg. To pack in the citrusy orange flavor, the zest of two oranges will be added to the butter and sugar during the creaming process. Lastly, the cookies are finished with a white chocolate drizzle after they've baked. We recommend white chocolate chips to make this easy, but you can also melt a finely chopped bar of white chocolate for the same effect.

Cream the butter, orange zest, vanilla, and sugar together until light and fluffy.

Add the egg and vanilla and mix until combined.

Mix in the flour, baking soda, and salt until a soft dough forms.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Portion the dough into 12 roughly golf ball–sized cookies and place the cookies on the baking sheet, 2 inches apart.

Bake for 13–14 minutes. Let cool.

Melt the white chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl and add it to a resealable plastic bag.

Snip the corner of the bag and gently squeeze the bag to drizzle melted white chocolate over the cookies.

Let the chocolate set for 10 minutes.

Serve, and enjoy.

Did you know that most cookie recipes can be made by using the creaming method or melting the butter? There are slight differences in how you should treat each cookie, and the final texture will be affected. Melting butter for cookies gives them a chewier, denser texture, since there isn't as much air incorporated. On the other hand, when you cream butter and sugar, the mixer adds much more air, lifting cookies up and making them light and tender. 

Either mixing method will produce a great cookie with few visual differences. If you use melted butter, the cookies will spread a bit more, but this can be countered by chilling to dough for at least an hour before portioning. Regardless of whether you melt or cream the butter for a recipe, the cookies should be baked at the same oven temperature and duration.

Creamsicles can be made with any flavor. With strawberries, cherries, or even grapes, the concept stays the same, always with vanilla ice cream and fruit. Taking this idea into account, these cookies can be spun into fun new flavors quite easily. 

When you want to flavor a cookie dough with fruit, one of the best methods is to use ingredients with low moisture. This is why orange zest works perfectly here; juice would alter the cookie dough too much and produce a misshapen, overly wet cookie. Lemon, grapefruit, and lime zest can be used in the same exact way. For other fruits with higher moisture, like strawberries, a great way for incorporating their flavor is with freeze-dried fruit powders. If the fruit is whole and freeze dried, simply blitz it in a food processor to turn it to powder.

Use 2-3 tablespoons of fruit powder in this recipe to change the flavor. Blueberry, strawberry, and raspberry cookies would all be amazing with white chocolate drizzle, and their powders are easy to find in grocery stores. Let us know what you end up creating!