Dulce de Leche Cookies

As you recall, my sister went to Buenos Aires over the summer.  She came back with some dulce de leche. Wait, scratch that.  She came back with this:

Totally unbeknownst to me, of course.  I wanted to bake cookies, and it was her snack day for her volleyball team.  So, I decided that I had to make something with dulce de leche.


There are several brands you can buy.  If you recall, I made some dulce de leche ice cream with the La Salamandra brand.  However, my sister also got another brand as you can see below.  Honestly I did not notice much difference between the two.

Dulce de leche is made from sweetened, heated milk.   My understanding is that you slowly simmer milk and sugar and it becomes this sticky, tasty confection as in the jar above.  Maybe one day I'll test out a recipe.  Maybe when we go through all those jars in the pantry.

I love how fast the stand mixer blends everything together

These cookies were particularly delightful because dulce de leche is mixed into the batter too

This is the time I ate my body weight in dulce de leche raw cookie batter

Baking away!

Cooling so we can sandwich them together!

Smearing on the dulce de leche - but still not overly sweet!

Dulce de Leche Sandwich Cookies adapted from joythebaker.com (makes about 30-40 sandwich cookies depending on how big you scoop them)

• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature
• 3/4 cup dulce de leche for the batter, plus another 1/2 to 3/4 cup dulce de leche for the filling
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.  

In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and salt.  

In a stand mixer bowl (or, if you don't have one, just a large bowl), beat the butter at medium speed until it is soft and broken up.  Add the 3/4 cup dulce de leche, brown sugar and granulated sugar.  Beat all this on medium speed for about 3 minutes (may need a bit more if you are using a hand mixer).  Then add the eggs, one at a time, beating to incorporate. 

Reduce the speed to low and add the dry ingredients.  Mix just till the flour is incorporated.  

Spoon the dough by a heaping teaspoon or so onto the baking sheets.  Joy said to bake the cookies from 10-12 minutes, but I found that 9 minutes was just enough to get them to be golden brown.  Let the cookies sit on the baking sheet for a few minutes, and then transfer to a wire rack to cool down completely. 

Once they are totally cool, you can spread the dulce de leche on one side of the cookie and sandwich.  

Supposedly they last 4 days if covered, but it is highly unlikely that these yummy sandwich cookies will last that long!