This is Week 2 of our Saveur Holiday Cookie Challenge: Cookies We Love. I chose to bake the Alfajores, a popular Latin-American dulce de leche sandwich cookie. Here’s the recipe from Saveur, with my notes following:

Alfajores (Latin-American Dulce de Leche Sandwich Cookies)
(makes about 20 sandwich cookies)

Ingredients:

1 2/3 cups cornstarch
1 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
2/3 cup sugar
10 tbsp. unsalted butter,
softened
1 tbsp. cognac or brandy
1/2 tsp. lemon zest
4 egg yolks
Canned dulce de leche, for filling
cookies

Preparation:

Heat oven to 350°.

In a bowl, sift together cornstarch, flour, and baking powder; set aside. In a mixer fitted with a paddle, beat together sugar and butter until fluffy. Add cognac and zest; beat. Add yolks one at a time; beat. Add dry ingredients; mix.

Transfer dough to a floured surface, knead briefly; divide into 3 pieces. Working with 1 dough piece at a time, roll dough to 1/4″ thickness. Using a 2 1/2″ round cookie cutter, cut out cookies; transfer to parchment paper—lined baking sheets, spaced 1″ apart. Reroll scraps and repeat.

Bake until golden, 12–15 minutes. Let cool. Flip half the cookies over; top each with 1 heaping tsp. dulce de leche. Top with remaining cookies.

Notes:

I have to say one thing, right off the bat: Really, Saveur?!? Canned dulce de leche?!? Dulce de leche is the easiest thing ever to make at home, provided you give it the proper time and attention. See my instructions on making dulce de leche of a few weeks ago, here. Please don’t use ready-made dulce de leche if you can avoid it. Real dulce de leche should only contain milk and sugar. The ready-made variety in cans and squeeze bottles has loads of other stuff in it. Make it yourself. It lasts for-freaking-ever in the fridge.

This is a nice, sturdy, crispy butter cookie. I used Orange Curacao instead of the brandy, and I honestly believe I could have skipped the liqueur and just used a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

This is a serious question for you guys, and I want you to be honest: Have you ever filled a sandwich cookie where the filling didn’t just goosh out? Or the top cookie slide off the filling? *Postscript – A day later, the dulce de leche filling set up. The tops are now firmly attached and no sliding. Guess I was impatient. The moral? Fill the cookies and leave them on a level surface for a couple of hours before storing!

The verdict? This is a very quick and easy to work with cookie. Except for the filling part. And it’s delicious. But, despite the elegant dulce de leche, unless you dump a boatload of holly on the plate, it just isn’t fancy or seasonal enough for the holidays, in my opinion. The search continues…

Please be sure to visit my comrades in cookies to see what they chose to serve up!

Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes

Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen

Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook

Judy of No Fear Entertaining

Kelly of Sass & Veracity

Michelle of Big Black Dog

RJ of Flamingo Musings (that’s me!)

Sandy of At the Baker’s Bench

Tiffany of The Nesting Project

Courtney of Coco Cooks

Dulce De Leche

I’m a little late, but here’s my contribution to the 12 Weeks of Holiday (Christmas) Cookies roundup! I made some dulce de leche (delicious milk caramel) earlier this week, and wanted to incorporate it into a cookie. For the sandwich cookies, I chose to adapt a shortbread cookie recipe out of Marye Audet’s Everything Cookies & Brownies Cookbook, called “Petticoat Tales”, and it worked out beautifully!

Petticoat Tails
(adapted from The Everything Cookies & Brownies Cookbook & used by permission)

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2-1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp. salt

Preparation:

Cream together the butter, confectioner’s sugar, and vanilla. Blend in the flour and salt. Wrap and refrigerate overnight (I was impatient and only chilled the dough for a couple of hours).

Preheat oven to 400º F.

Roll teaspoons of dough into balls (I used a round teaspoon measuring spoon) and place on cookie sheets. Flatten the balls with the bottom of a glass, dipped in sugar, to 1/8″ thickness.

Bake for 8 – 10 minutes, or until lightly browned.

Notes:

I had a little difficulty with the “glass dipped in sugar” part. The sugar wouldn’t stick to the glass, but the cookies did. To remedy that, I put some demerara sugar in a small plate, placed the cookie balls in the sugar and flattened slightly with my fingers. I then placed the cookies on the (ungreased) cookie sheet, sugar-side up (spaced about 1″ apart), and flattened them with the glass. Worked like a charm!

Also, allow the cookies to cool completely on the cookie sheet after baking. I wanted these to be really pale to contrast with the dulce de leche filling, so I baked them for the minimum 8 minutes. They were fully baked and perfectly crispy – exactly what I was looking for!

But then, I expected no less from my friend, Marye. Check out her books and check out her blog, Restless Chipotle for awesome writing and recipes!

To make your own Dulce de Leche, see my recent post on Apple Cream Napoleons with Dulce de Leche. It’s super-easy, but admittedly a little time-consuming. Still, you can’t beat it for flavor and versatility – and it’ll keep for weeks. Once you make it, you’ll look for all kinds of ways to use it, too!

Dulce De Leche

We’re half-way there, gang! This is Day 6 of the 12 Days of Cookies project! We’re baking our personal choices from the 2008 Bon Appétit Holiday Cookie-a-Day collection, and still going strong.

My choice today is the Pecan Lace Sandwich Cookie with Orange Buttercream. And all I can say is: Oh, My!

First the recipe, then my notes:

Pecan Lace Sandwich Cookies with Orange Buttercream

Preparation:

Notes:

Those of us who have baked this cookie, so far, all agree that it is particularly fragile and probably would not travel very far intact. But. The taste is awesome, with or without the orange buttercream – which is pretty awesome in itself, by the way. Personally, I found them a bit too sweet sandwiched with the buttercream filling, but my husband disagreed, so you make your own judgment call on that one.

And it is an exceptionally easy and quick cookie to make. No mixer required, it’s all done on the stovetop and then popped in the oven. I found that 11 minutes was a bit too long to bake these, making them a little darker than I would have liked, and so baked the second batch for 10 minutes, getting that proverbial “golden brown and delicious” appearance.

You should absolutely bake this cookie. I know I will!

Please visit my partners in holiday baking, below, and see what they’ve got in store for you. And don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the seventh installment!

Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes (honorary member and our founder but not participating this year)
Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen
Courtney of Coco Cooks
Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook
Judy of No Fear Entertaining
Kelly of Sass & Veracity
Michelle of Big Black Dog
RJ of Flamingo Musings (hey! that’s me!)
Sandy of At the Baker’s Bench
Tiffany of The Nesting Project