Sandwich Cookies

It’s Christmas cookie season!

I started Saturday, you?

I like to start with the most difficult {I also had lots of time on Saturday}.  Sandwich cookies.  These cookies are tough because there are so many steps.  Make dough.  Chill dough.  Cut dough.  Bake dough.  Repeat.  Make frosting.  Fill cookies. I think it ended up taking me 3 hours, just be warned.

Here’s the recipe (adapted from my Mom/Aunt Janet) – Janet’s an AMAZING baker, FYI

Dough

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c (2 cubes) soft butter
1/3 c whipping cream
2 c flour

granulated sugar

Frosting

1/2 c (1 cube) butter
1 1/2 c powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1-2 tsp whipping cream optional (enough to thin the frosting…but don’t thin it too much)
food coloring

Directions

1.  Combine butter, whipping cream and flour.  Roll the dough into a log and divide into fourths.

2.  Put one mini-dough-ball between 2 pieces of saran wrap and roll out the dough as thin as you can.  Then put it in the fridge.  Continue with the other 3 pieces of dough.  Chill for about an hour.

3.  Remove 1 piece of flattened-saran-wrap-dough from the fridge.  I place it on top of a silpat, but it doesn’t really matter.  Remove 1 layer of saran wrap and sprinkle a little bit of flour on it.  Flip it over (still keeping it on the saran wrap) and begin to roll it thinner.  Basically, roll it as thin as you possibly can.  No matter how thin you roll it, it won’t be thin enough.

4.  Prick the entire sheet of dough with a fork.  Then cut out little circles (1) – I use a cutter that’s a little bigger than a quarter.  Now the tricky part.  Get a plate and fill it with sugar.  Now you need to coat both sides of the little dough circles with sugar (2 & 3).  I use the saran wrap to help me remove the dough and use a fork to flip the circles in the sugar and transfer them to a cookie sheet (4). (FYI – I hate wasting dough, so I collect all the scraps, flatten, chill and cutout more circles).

5.  The cookies won’t spread, so you can get them pretty close.  Bake for 5-6 minutes at 375 (my oven is hot, so I cooked them for 5 minutes at 365).  Keep an eye on them.  You don’t want them to turn brown.

6.  As soon as they come out of the oven, use a spatula to loosen them.  Then transfer to a cooling rack.

7.  Make your frosting!  Combine the butter, sugar and vanilla.  Add the whipping cream only if necessary.  Divide the frosting into 2 bowls.  I use red and green to be festive.  When you’re finished, fill up 2 disposable pastry bags with the frosting.

8.  Divide your cookies into fourths (you don’t have to, I just like to keep my numbers even).  1/4 will get a dollop of red, 1/4 a dollop of green and the other 1/2 will finish the sandwich.

You can add more frosting than I did.  There was some leftover.

This recipe ended up making just under 200 cookies…or almost 400 individual wafers.  However, I’ve made this recipe in the past and ended up with WAY less.  It all depends on how thin you roll your dough.

These cookies are actually best the next day.  The frosting has a chance to soften the cookie just a bit – I’ve heard they are quite tasty with your morning coffee.  They are also an under-appreciated cookie.  People don’t ever look at them and say, “oooh, those look good.”  They have to eat it first before realizing how awesome they really are.

Did I mention there was leftover frosting?