Hey guys, it’s time for cookies! These cream-filled sandwich cookies are one of my favorite cookies of all time. They’re delicately crunchy and crumbly, with a gorgeous caramelized outer edge and a delicious buttery flavor that pairs beautifully with the smooth buttercream filling. Oh, and they’re super easy to make too. Which is always a major bonus in my book. You don’t even need a mixer for these!
In fact, I like to think of these cookies as macarons for dummies. Because a) they’re super easy to make, b) you can adjust the flavor of the filling, and c) because they are so cute!
I chose to make plain vanilla ones for this post: vanilla cookies filled with vanilla buttercream, but you can also fill these with either white or dark chocolate ganache (or caramelized white chocolate ganache!), coffee buttercream, chocolate buttercream, vanilla buttercream and a dollop of your favorite jam or fruit curd, salted caramel buttercream from this recipe for French macarons, or even more exotic buttercream flavors, such as rose or orange blossom. You can go crazy with these!
Just bake up a batch of cookies, choose your favorite filling, use a piping bag fitted with a small star tip to pipe the filling onto half the cookies, place the other half of the cookies on top, and you’ll have the cutest little sandwich cookies ever. Well, okay, the second cutest sandwich cookies ever… Macarons can’t be beaten in the cute department 🙂
Anyway, let’s talk about how easy these are to make. Like I said, you won’t need a mixer for these. Just a wooden spoon.
First thing you need to do is beat the butter until it’s soft and smooth. Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be fluffy or anything, so no excessive amounts of elbow-grease required. You just want the butter to be soft and smooth.
You then dump in powdered sugar, an egg, and a little vanilla. Stir with your wooden spoon to combine, then add flour and salt and stir until the batter looks smooth and has reached the consistency of thick buttercream.
Like so:
Next, pipe little dollops of the batter onto a baking sheet lined with baking parchment. I used a large open tip for this.
Bake the cookies for about 10 minutes and take them out once the edges of the cookies have browned to a golden caramel color.
Really guys, these cookies can be ready to eat within 30 minutes. 20 minutes if you’re good with a piping bag! The cookies are also amazing on their own, by the way. So if you don’t feel like making buttercream, just leave them plain and you’ll still have some awesomely delicious cookies.
These are actually classic Dutch cookies, and they always remind me of my grandma. Not only because they share her name – rough translation: Little Wilhelmina’s – but also because I used to make them for her. Oh, and she also gave me the recipe for these!
Well, the recipe for the cookies, anyway. I decided to fill the cookies with leftover German buttercream, but you can use whatever buttercream you like best. If you need to make buttercream especially for these cookies, I suggest you go with American buttercream, as you only need a few ingredients and a couple of minutes to make it. Just make sure to salt it, otherwise American buttercream might be a bit too sweet as a filling for these!
Now, I used quite a generous amount of buttercream to fill the cookies, because I love the look of those frilly buttercream edges. And buttercream, of course. I also loooove buttercream!
The original recipe calls for less buttercream, though. Just enough to stick two cookies together. It’s something you may want to consider doing when you’re making these for a fancy party, so your guest won’t cover their faces in buttercream every time they enjoy one of your cute cookies. Or, if you don’t want to use less buttercream because you want to show of those cute frilly edges, you could serve the cookies cold out of the fridge, so the buttercream is firm rather than soft. That way, it won’t spill out of the sides of the cookies as you eat them and less napkins are required 🙂
Personally, I don’t mind messy or a face covered in buttercream. Just give me another cookie!
Enjoy guys!
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- 100g (or â…“ cup + 5 teaspoons) unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
- 100g (or ¾ cup + 2½ teaspoons) powdered sugar
- 1 large egg (about 50g)
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 115g (or ¾ cup + 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons) all-purpose flour
- pinch of salt
- 100g (or about ½ cup) of your favorite buttercream, I used German buttercream
- Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F(standard oven setting) and line two baking sheets with baking parchment.
- In a medium-size bowl, using a wooden spoon or a rubber spatula, beat the butter until smooth. Add the powdered sugar, egg and vanilla and stir to combine. Add the flour and the salt and stir until the batter is smooth and has the consistency of thick buttercream.
- Transfer the batter to a piping bag fitted with a medium open tip and pipe 2,5-cm/1-inch dollops onto the prepared baking sheets. Make sure to space the dollops apart a bit, as the cookies will spread a bit in the oven.
- Bake (one sheet at a time) in the middle of the oven for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges of the cookies have turned a golden color. Remove from the oven. Allow the cookies to cool completely on the baking sheets.
- Once cool, use a piping bag fitted with a small star tip to fill the cookies. Starting in the center of the first of each cookie pair, spiral outwards. Place the second cookie on top and press down lightly.
- Depending on your personal preference and how much buttercream you’ve used to fill the cookies, serve the cookies at room temperature or cold.
- Cookies will keep, stored in an airtight container in the fridge, for three days, although they will lose most of their crunch as time progresses because of the buttercream filling.
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New favorite food quote:
Hi! I baked these today.
I think i might have messed up somewhere, as my cookies were soft in the centre, i.e. only the bottom were crunchy. Can you please point out what i can do to avoid this?
Tasted great, however. They were gone in a flash! Thank you for this recipe 🙂
Hi Putri, I’m so glad you like the recipe! The cookies should be a bit softer in the center than around the edges, but not really soft. Crumbly soft, if that makes sense 😉 Try baking them a little longer next time!
Perfection. I mean seriously, these things are prettier than most supermodels. I cannot WAIT to try them out!
Haha, thanks so much Karly! Let me know how they turned out 😉