Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies with Peanut Butter Chocolate Ganache: #CreativeCookieExchange

Rustic and thick Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies with Peanut Butter Chocolate Ganache are the perfect sandwich cookie for people who like their cookies unapologetically sturdy, chewy and delicious! Keep reading for more Creative Cookie Exchange Sandwich Cookies! Affiliate links have been used in this post to link to items I am discussing.

You know how some sandwich cookies are almost ethereal in their perfection? Kind of like a macaron? Yeah these are not those cookies. These peanut butter sandwich cookies are for people who like thick, craggy, loaded drop cookies–only in sandwich cookie form. Beauty is not their strong suit–but they are loaded on flavor and confident in their sturdiness. OK now I am anthropomorphizing cookies.

Yikes.

The point being, I meant to take a picture of one of my kids chomping a bite out of one of these beauties, so you could see just how thick and sturdy they are, but I forgot. So take my word for it. You will only need one of these, but it will be a glorious one, I promise.

So I have this kind of crazy habit, and it all started with my love for chocolate peanut butter. Specifically Peanut Butter & Co.’s Dark Chocolate Dreams. Don’t judge but this is my midnight snack of choice. I adore it. So anyway, as I’ve mentioned I loathe Nutella, and so over the last few years I have taken to pinning and bookmarking sweet baking recipes using Nutella with the express idea of using the much less sweet Dark Chocolate Dreams peanut butter in them instead.

When Creative Cookie Exchange for April came up, and the theme was Sandwich Cookies, I started thinking about peanut butter sandwich cookies, but I did not want a pure chocolate filling (although I feel certain that would be awesome too). So I started going through some of the Nutella recipes I had seen over the years and came across this sandwich cookie by Sweet Peas and Saffron–I had a winner!

The cookies themselves are quite simple, easy peasy, but I am afraid that my comments on the filling are going to give you fits! So with my apologies, let me explain that every now and again I end up with a jar of Dark Chocolate Dream peanut butter that is either insufficiently mixed or just extra oily due to human or peanut error. Therefore not fun to eat with a spoon. I had a jar like that and wanted to use that up–but I also wanted to add extra chocolate to it for 2 reasons, both to help firm it up and to make it more chocolate. So I kind of added and tasted as I went and honestly do not have a great idea of how much chocolate I used. But usually their peanut butter is pretty darn firm. So you should need to add less. I wrote the recipe as 75% peanut butter and 25% chocolate, but you should just use your common sense–since either solid peanut butter or solid chocolate should work, whatever ratio you end up with should be fine. Plus dipping some broken pieces of cooked cookie into the filling to see how you like them together (flavor-wise) is one of the baker’s prerogatives!

One last note: you can of course just use 2 forks to create a pattern and flatten your cookie dough balls. I used Nordic Ware All Season Cookie Impressions cookie stamps that John got me for Christmas. They worked so well and were so much fun that now I really want the Nordic Ware Holiday Cast Cookie Stamps! That’s a hint for my birthday if anyone is reading–and no it is not until September but hey it is never too soon to plan!

I hope you keep reading for more delicious Sandwich Cookies!

5 from 1 vote

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Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies with Peanut Butter Chocolate Ganache

Prep Time

25 mins

Cook Time

15 mins

Total Time

40 mins

 

Closely adapted from Sweet Peas and Saffron. Note that this cookie is best made over 2 days, to allow the dough time to rest in the fridge. Make sure your cookie dough balls are truly about 1 tablespoon of dough, or else the cookies will be way too big!

Note that prep time does not include chill time.

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: Cookies

Author: TheSpicedLife

Ingredients

• 1½ cups (215 g) white whole wheat flour
• 1 t potato flour
• ½ t baking powder
• ½ t baking soda
• 1/2 t fine sea salt
• ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• ½ cup peanut butter, room temperature, I used Jiff
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/4 packed dark brown sugar (I like this for added color--use all light brown sugar if a problem)
• 1 egg
• 1 t vanilla
• turbinado type coarse sugar for rolling (I used raw cane sugar)

For assembling:

• 3/4 cup dark chocolate peanut butter
• 1/4 cup roughly chopped chocolate (I used a mix of 62% cacao semisweet and 39% cacao milk chocolate)

Instructions

1. Whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda and sea salt. Set aside.
2. Beat the butter and peanut butter until creamy and completely incorporated, preferably in a stand mixer. Pause to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl several times.
3. Add the sugars in 3 installations, beating well to incorporate each time. Continue to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed.
4. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Scrape the sides and bottom again.
5. Mix in the flour mixture on the lowest speed. When completely mixed, transfer to a smaller bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, but preferably overnight.
6. When you are ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 375 F. Place parchment paper or silicone mats on 2 cookie sheets.
7. Place about 1/2 cup of coarse turbinado sugar in a shallow bowl or dish. Pinch off tablespoon-size pieces of dough, roll quickly in your hands to make a ball, then roll the ball of dough in the sugar. Place on the prepared cookie sheets--I got 12 cookies to a sheet.
8. Slightly flatten the balls with the palm of your hand, and then finish flattening a little more firmly (not a lot) with a cookie stamp or 2 forks.
9. Bake for 7-9 minutes, or until golden brown. The more pale cookies in the very top photo baked for about 8 minutes. The slightly more crisp darker cookies in the photo right above this recipe baked for more like 10 minutes. Both were delicious.
10. While the cookies are baking, prepare the filling: Place the chocolate peanut butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium low heat. Stir in the chocolate. When it is melted and cohesive, remove from the heat. Hitting the sweet spot here is kind of tricky--when the mixture is super warm it will not hold onto the cookie and will instead drip over. However, you need to work quickly once the mixture is thick enough to spread, because soon it becomes almost too thick, which is why some of my cookies have a much messier filling!
11. At any rate, cool the cookies completely before dolloping 1-2 tablespoons of the chocolate mixture into the center of a cookie. Use a second cookie to press down (gently) and spread the chocolate to the edges. The range of filling amount just depends on how stuffed you want your cookies--we liked a lot of the filling!
12. These cookies can be stored at room temperature (assuming your house is not super hot, like over 75 F) in a sealed container because the chocolate will help ensure that the peanut butter filling hardens.

The theme this month is Sandwich Cookies–any kind of cookie presented as any kind of sandwich, we’re laid back because that means more cookies for everyone! If you are a blogger and want to join in the fun, contact me at thespicedlife AT gmail DOT com and I will get you added to our Facebook group, where we discuss our cookies and share links.

You can also just use us as a great resource for cookie recipes–be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts (you can find all of them at The Spiced Life). You will be able to find them the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month! Also, if you are looking for inspiration to get in the kitchen and start baking, check out what all of the hosting bloggers have made:

• Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies with Peanut Butter Chocolate Ganache from The Spiced Life
• Lemon Sandwich Cookies from Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks
• Cream Cheese Filled Orange Cookies from Food Lust People Love
• Linzer Cookies from A Baker’s House
• Chocolate Mint Sandwiches from Karen’s Kitchen Stories
• Choc Orange cookie sandwich from Made With Love
• Chocolate Amaretto Creams from Our Good Life
• Maple Cream Cookies from Upstate Ramblings
• Mini Alfajor Cookies from Basic N Delicious

If you like pinning collages, may I suggest this one?