For the holidays or ANY day: Chocolate sandwich cookies

he first time I had a homemade chocolate sandwich cookie was in 2003 at Tom Colicchio's fast-casual place in New York, 'wichcraft. The lunch was really great but the cookie absolutely stood out--it was chocolate with a peanut butter filling--heavenly!--and I have been meaning to attempt something in the chocolate sandwich cookie realm ever since. 

I looked up a number of sandwich cookie recipes online and wavered between this style (more of a drop cookie) or a roll of dough that would be sliced. In hoping that the drop cookie would be softer (my experience with sliced roll cookies is that they tend to be a bit on the crisp/tough side), I went for it. And the payoff was delightful!

Chocolate sandwich cookies
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
2 whole large eggs plus 2 large egg yolks
3 oz fine-quality semisweet chocolate, finely chopped, melted, and cooled
2 oz fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened), finely chopped, melted, and cooled

Whisk together flour and salt in a bowl until combined.

Beat together butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes in a stand mixer (preferably fitted with paddle attachment) or 4 minutes with a handheld. Add whole eggs, yolks, and chocolate, beating until combined. Reduce speed to low, then add flour mixture and mix until combined well.

Put oven racks in upper and lower thirds of oven and preheat oven to 350°F.

Drop 1/2 teaspoons of batter 1 inch apart on 2 ungreased baking sheets. Bake, switching position of sheets halfway through baking, until cookies are puffed up, 7 to 8 minutes total, then transfer with a metal spatula to racks to cool completely. Cool baking sheets and make more cookies with remaining dough on cooled sheets.

I "dropped" the dough the first sheet of cookies and they didn't look like thin sandwich cookies; I knew I would need to take a more active hand in their shape! So I filled a gallon ziploc (homemade piping bag, don't you know?) and snipped off the corner and piped rounds onto the baking sheet, then smoothed them with my finger. This worked really well. I would highly recommend this approach, rather than just dropping dough onto the pan.

Also, the recipe above (epicurious again, of course!) calls for a chocolate filling, as well. I wasn't in the mood for double chocolate, and whenever there's Nutella in the house, it is the go-to filling of choice. Naturally.

So to fill:

Spread 1/2 teaspoon filling on flat side of 1 cookie, then place flat side of a second cookie over filling to form a sandwich. Fill remaining cookies in same manner.

These cookies tasted pretty good right out of the oven, without filling. They tasted even better the next day, with Nutella firmly in place. They seemed to continue to improve for a number of days, but I did not get a chance to verify past three or four days, as they were long gone by then!

Next up: to experiment with a peanut butter filling, and a peppermint filling too... looking forward to sharing the results.