Oh, Dough You Didn't!

Who loves sandos? This guy, clearly. I was still riding high the success and love of the Oatmeal Cream Pie cookie when I chose this cookie. However, I took some liberties here. The Brownie Cookie is a standalone cookie and definitely deserves to be as it is a glorious concoction of chocolate, chewiness, and richness that you love about brownies, but you get in a thinner cookie form. So, how do you make a brownie cookie better? Well, I would argue you add some delicious buttercream with a heavy-handed splash of Five Farms Irish Cream Liqueur and turn these into decadent sandwiches! Shazam! Magic in your mouth!

Making these cookies is obviously similar to making brownies in that there are lots of eggs and chocolate. The difference from my experience is that in this recipe you are whipping the eggs and sugar together for a long period of time, approximately 6-8 minutes. You’re putting a lot of air into this dough, which is not the case with a traditional brownie. And while that is doing its thing you melt the butter and chocolate together, including the Dutch-processed cocoa powder, and then put your two mixtures together before adding in your dry ingredients. After that it’s just a matter letting the dough rest before scooping, cookie, cooling and assembling.

RESULTS

This is a very satisfying cookie to make, even without the buttercream. It’s very rich and there is a nice chew to the cookie despite them looking fairly thin and potentially crispy. The edges definitely come out a little crispy, but only slightly…a pleasing amount to add enough texture to supplement the chewiness. The inclusion of 8 oz of bar chocolate combined with a 1/4 cup of cocoa powder ensures that your chocolate craving is beaten into submission…but with love! This recipe can easily be doubled, and I kind of wish I had done that only so that I could have made even more yummy sandwiches.

FOR NEXT TIME

Only a few observations and thoughts for this cookie. I mean, c’mon…it’s a chocolate brownie cookie! Why mess with a good thing?!

• You can add peanut butter to this recipe, a few tablespoons, to kick up the flavor. I will try that next time, but probably without creating a sandwich out of it. I would be concerned about having too many flavors competing for recognition.
• The finished dough prior to cooking is like batter and is very soft and you are dropping loosely shaped piles of dough on the sheet to bake. And I had let the dough rest a little longer than called for to help it firm up more before putting it on the sheet. Nothing really to be done about this, but something to be aware of next time.
• The addition of buttercream and the creation of a sandwich was not called for, obviously. But it was really fun and made for an interesting flavor profile with the chocolate. For next time I might try different flavors of buttercream. Lemon? Strawberry? Caramel? Espresso? Who knows, but doesn’t that sound fun?
• I didn’t pipe the buttercream to make these sandos, I used the plop and smash approach! But, much like the Oatmeal Cream Pie cookie you could pipe the filling and really have a beautifully finished product.