A Big Score With Football Sandwich Cookies
Looking around for Super Bowl party foods, I came across an idea on the boards for football-shaped whoopee pies. So I thought, what if I do them like Oreos? Not as cakey and kind of cool, right?
So I got started first with the cream filling, and I got the idea from the Bouchon Bakery to add white chocolate into it. But for the most part, I went my own way.
Ingredients:
- 1 4-oz bar of Ghirardelli white baking chocolate broken and chopped
- 1 tbsp unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
Also, Bouchon Bakery uses shortbread in its sandwich cookies, but I didn’t want to do shortbread, so I went with a simple roll-out chocolate cookie instead.
Ingredients:
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp Kosher salt
- 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
- 2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
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First, I made the cream filling, beginning by chopping the white chocolate in a small food processor.
Next, I used a double boiler to melt the chocolate and butter, stirring frequently until it was nice and smooth.
While that was melting, I set the cream on a separate burner, on low, just to warm it.
Those were mixed together
along with the vanilla extract, and the confectioners sugar whisked in until it was smooth and creamy. Then the bowl went into the fridge to set for about three hours total, though you could probably leave it up to 24-hours in the fridge, as long as you cover it.
While that was chilling, I started on the cookie dough. First I mixed all of the dry ingredients in a large bowl, whisked those together to remove any lumps, and set them aside.
In the mixing bowl, I added the butter to the sugar and mixed until everything was nice and fluffy.
Then the eggs and vanilla went in.
The dry ingredients were then gradually incorporated. If you have a pouring shield on your mixer, this would be an ideal time to utilize it. Cocoa powders loves to fly…which I have learned the hard way.
Once the dough was all mixed together, I made two discs, wrapped them in plastic and refrigerated them for about two hours.
It just makes the dough easier to work with, though you do kind of have to let it get back to almost room-temperature to roll it out smoothly. And then use your cutters. Obviously, in honor of the Super Bowl this weekend, I made football-shaped ones, but it goes without saying (if only I were the type who could go without saying) that you could do this with any shape you choose. In fact, I’ve already got plans for Valentine’s Day…
After pre-heating the oven to 350 degrees, place your shapes onto parchment paper lined cookie sheets and bake for 8 minutes.
They come out looking much the same as they did going in.
After the cookies cool, take your cream filling and make your sandwiches.
After that, I took Royal Icing (though I cut this recipe down to 1/3 its size, adding the sugar last until the icing had the right consistency ) and design away using a decorating bag or bottle, fine tip being the better choice for this task.
The kids really flipped over these treats…in fact, if I place any bet this weekend, it will be on the odds that these cookies won’t make it to kick-off time.
