Some days you just need a cookie

Soft Coffee Cream Sandwich Cookies

🎉 Welcome to my newsletter, The Boy Who Bakes, a subscriber-supported newsletter, dedicated to all things baked. For more bonus posts, filled with exclusive recipes just like this one, you can become a paid subscriber for the weekly newsletter, Second Helpings. It costs just £5 a month and, as well as the weekly recipes, that also unlocks access to the full archive of past recipes. To subscribe, to either the paid or free newsletter, click the link below.🎉

Hello, happy Friday!

I am currently writing this en route to Copenhagen for a long weekend, a getaway to celebrate the end of an exciting project and my upcoming 40th birthday. What better way to celebrate than to eat cardamom buns in a beautiful city? It sounded like a perfect idea to me!

Whilst I don’t plan on being online very much the next few days, I will make an exception for the Substack comment section, so if you have any last-minute recommendations for Copenhagen, do let me know down below.

I didn’t want to leave you without a recipe, so today I have a fab little cookie recipe for you – a coffee cream sandwich cookie, to be exact. The recipe starts with an incredibly simple cookie made with treacle for a rich and surprisingly complex flavour. The cookie kind of resembles a gingerbread but is made without any spices. They are soft and a little chewy, and they’re perfectly partnered with an espresso cream cheese filling.

This is the sort of cookie that I love. Simple to make, they have a big flavour and texture payoff, and if they weren’t already made with coffee, they’d be the absolute perfect pairing with a big mug of tea or coffee. I also love that something made with so few ingredients can have such a captivating flavour. Currently, I am having something of an obsession with using sugar as the actual flavour of a recipe. I know that might seem like a bit of a left-field idea, but so many sugars have an incredible inherent flavour. White sugars taste nothing but sweet, but once you leave those behind, you open a wonderful world of flavours. In this recipe I have used more common sweeteners, brown sugar and treacle, but even these add a wonderful complex flavour that makes an incredibly delicious cookie. Beyond the standard supermarket offering, there are a tonne of other options that all have something unique to offer. From jaggery to panela, coconut sugar to maple, there is a huge amount of variety, and over the next couple of months, I plan on exploring these ingredients more to explore what we can make with all of them.

Coffee Cream Sandwich Cookies

Makes 10

Soft Treacle Cookies

125g unsalted butter, melted
175g light brown sugar
75g black treacle
1 large egg
300g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
Granulated sugar, for coating

Coffee Cream Cheese Frosting

2 tsp instant espresso powder
2 tsp boiling water
50g unsalted butter, room temperature
150g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
50g full-fat cream cheese, room temperature
Pinch of salt

To make the cookie dough, add the butter, whilst still hot, to the bowl of a stand mixer along with the sugar and treacle. Mix on low/medium speed for a minute or so until slightly cooled before adding the egg and increasing the speed to medium/high and mixing for 2 minutes until the mixture is pale. Add the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt and mix to form a thick cookie dough.

Cover the bowl and refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours before baking.

Preheat the oven to 180ºC (160ºC Fan) and line a couple of large baking trays with parchment paper.

Divide the dough into 20 equal-sized portions and roll into balls. Roll the cookies in granulated sugar until evenly coated, then place onto the prepared baking trays, setting a couple inches apart to account for spreading.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 12 minutes or until the cookies have puffed and have a slightly cracked surface, with a touch of browning on the edges. Remove and set aside to cool. As the cookies cool, they should collapse slightly, leaving you with flat cookies, ready to be filled.

To make the filling, add the espresso powder and boiling water to a small bowl and stir to combine. Set aside for the moment. Add the butter to a large bowl and beat together with an electric mixer until soft and creamy, about 2-3 minutes. Add the icing sugar and mix on low speed just until combined. Turn up the speed to high and beat for about 5 minutes or until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla, cream cheese, salt and espresso mixture and beat on low speed, just until smooth and lump-free.

Flip half of the cookies upside down, and using either a spoon or piping bag, top these cookies with a generous portion of the cream cheese frosting, sandwiching together with a second cookie.

Best on the day made but can also be refrigerated for 3-4 days. Best served at room temperature, as straight from the fridge the cookies will have a firmer texture.