Orange Juice Cookies sweet treat for special someone

Dear Laura: I hope you can help me find a recipe for Orange Juice Cookies. It had flour, sugar, eggs, orange juice and coconut. – Judy

Dear Judy: With Valentine’s Day around the corner, cookies with a sweet-tart citrus flavor would make a great treat for a special somebody. Here are a couple of recipes that may be close to what you are looking for. The first I found on the Internet and tweaked a bit. I substituted butter for shortening and increased the orange juice a bit. You can either mix the coconut into the dough or, as I did, roll the cookies in it, which allows for small pieces of coconut to lightly toast during cooking.

Italian Orange Juice Cookies

Adapted from www.jewish-food.org

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup granulated sugar

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon orange juice

Powdered sugar or coconut flakes, for rolling cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease one or two cookie sheets. Beat butter with sugar in a large bowl until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. In a separate bowl, stir flour with baking powder. Beat in flour mixture, alternating with orange juice in two additions, until a soft, but sticky, dough forms.

Sprinkle powdered sugar or coconut flakes in a shallow dish. Take about 1 tablespoon of the dough and roll it in the sugar or coconut until it forms a ball and is well coated. Place on prepared cookie sheet and flatten slightly. Repeat, spacing cookies about 2 inches apart. Bake in center of oven for about 15 minutes or until cookies are light brown on the bottom. Cool on a rack and store in an airtight container for up to 4 days.

Yield: About 3 dozen

Approximate nutrition per cookie (excluding powdered sugar and/or coconut): 73 calories, 3 grams fat (1.7 grams saturated, 37 percent fat calories), 1.5 grams protein, 10 grams carbohydrate, 24 milligrams cholesterol, less than 1 gram dietary fiber, 72 milligrams sodium.

Valentine Lemonade Cookies

From The Spokesman-Review Dorothy Dean Homemaker Services, February 1957

3 cups sifted flour

1 cup sugar

1 cup butter or margarine

2 eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon baking soda

4 tablespoons frozen lemonade concentrate

1/2 teaspoon lemon extract or 1 teaspoon vanilla

Red-colored sugar

Rub together flour, sugar and butter. Add beaten eggs and baking soda. Stir in lemonade concentrate. Add lemon extract or vanilla. Chill the dough for at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Roll out the dough and cut in heart shapes (using a cookie cutter or a heart pattern cut into cardboard). Sprinkle red sugar on top of each cookie. Bake on greased cookie sheets at 400 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes, or until cookies are firm but not browned. If your cookies seem to be browning too fast, reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees.

Yield: About 3 dozen large heart-shaped cookies

Approximate nutrition per cookie (excluding colored sugar): 109 calories, 5.5 grams fat (3.3 grams saturated, 45 percent fat calories), 1.4 grams protein, 13.8 grams carbohydrate, 25 milligrams cholesterol, less than 1 gram dietary fiber, 91 milligrams sodium.