Alfajores, Dulce De Leche Sandwich Shortbread Cookies

With winters on full bloom, and with holiday season on, it’s time to spend sweet moments with family and friends. This is the season of spreading love and joy, of indulging into all your sweet desires. And not at all a time to worry about anything. Winters to me is not just about those chilling days and nights when sun doesn’t show up for days, but it is more than that. It’s about getting cuddled under the warmth of quilt, munching onto peanuts, carrot halwa and sipping into hot comforting soups. It’s also about chit chatting with family and friends for hours, when most of us have taken off from work, just to be with each other. And when we chat for long long hours, it has to be accompanied with some great food and quick munchies. And to me, cookies are the best things to be traveled and shared and I have been on a cookie baking spree this month.  I baked some brownie cookies with festive season cut outs, like gingerbread men, snowflakes, pine trees and stars {will share the recipe sometime soon}.  And I also baked some easy quick shortbread cookies and sandwiched them with the leftover dulce de leche from roasted banana ice cream, I made during fall. These kind of sandwich cookies are known as Alfajores, and are particularly from the region of Latin America. As dry fruits and nuts mark become essential for the winters, I rolled the edges of cookies into some finely chopped toasted almonds, to make them more festive. They taste better the next day, they are made as the cookies become softer with dulce de leche sandwiched in between.

Ingredients

260 grams all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
200 grams unsalted butter, room temperature
60 grams confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Around 1 1/2 cup dulce de leche {click here for homemade recipe}
Around 1/2 cup finely chopped almonds, toasted

Directions

1. In a bowl, whisk the flour and salt and keep aside. In a separate bowl, beat the butter until smooth and creamy. Beat in the sugar and vanilla extract. Gently beat in the flour, until incorporated.
2. Wrap the dough into a cling film and flatten and chill for an hour, until firm.
3. Preheat the oven to 180 degree C and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
4. On a lightly floured surface roll out the dough until 1/4 inch thick. Using the lightly floured 2 inched round cookie cutter, cut out the cookies and place on baking sheet. Bake for 7 – 10 minutes, until browned on the edges. Let cool completely on a wire rack.
5. Take two cookies and sandwich them with heaping tablespoon of dulce de leche such that dulce the leche oozes out slightly from the edges. Roll the cookie edges into toasted nuts and store in an airtight container in fridge.