Dulce de Leche Chocolate Cookies

Happy December the first friends!! Welcome to the best month of the year, we can now put that Christmas tree up without looking weird, listen to ‘Driving home for Christmas’ on repeat and bake ALL the cookies! Who’s excited?? I know I am :) After I post this amazing recipe for you I’m off to drink first mulled wine of the season with some friends and listening to carols at one of London’s Christmas markets <3 Told you it’s the best month of the year.

Back to the recipe now! I created this Dulce de Leche sandwich cookies using one of my trusted recipes for chocolate linzers, but making them extra festive by adding a layer of creamy caramel Dulce de Leche from Waitrose & Partners in between two biscuits. They are easy to make, they are delicious and trust me, everyone will LOVE them!

INGREDIENTS

180g room temperature butter
160g powdered sugar
1 egg yolk
1 whole egg
320g all-purpose flour
2tbsp cacao powder
2 tsp vanilla (I use vanilla paste but you are free to use vanilla extract)
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt

TIP: this is quite a big batch of cookie dough (you’ll probably get around 30 cookie sandwiches) I usually divide the mixture and make half of it without cacao so you get vanilla biscuits and add a tablespoon to the other half of the dough to make the chocolate biscuits. Or if you don’t need that many cookies at once you can always freeze half the dough or just use half of the ingredients from the list and make a smaller batch.

1 jar of Dulce de Leche by Waitrose and Partners

METHOD

Preheat the oven to 180oC and line a large baking tray with baking parchment.
Place the room temperature butter and sugar in the bowl and beat together on medium-low speed until smooth and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a silicone spatula. Stir in the vanilla, salt and cacao. Add the flour + baking powder (it’s good to sift them both before adding them to the mixture) and use the spatula to incorporate it fully. The dough should be sticky at this point so don’t worry too much. Divide the dough and wrap each part with cling film foil and let it cool in the fridge for at least an hour so it’s easier to handle.
Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface. Use a round cookie cutter to cut circles then use a smaller cutter (I used a star but you can use any shape you like such as heart or just a simple circle) to cut little windows in half of the cookies. Transfer to the prepared baking sheet and bake for approx 7-8 minutes. Let them cool down completely before handling them. Don’t touch them while they are hot as they will still be soft to touch!
Spread a teaspoon of Dulce de Leche into the bottom round cookies then top with the windowed cookies. They are ready to serve immediately or you can store them in a cookie box in a cool place for days :)