I like to call these, "half-baked cookies", after the Ben and Jerry's flavor with brownies and cookies dough. As some of you loyal readers (hi mom!) may remember, I spent several summers through college working at the gift shop in the Ben and Jerry's factory in my home town of Waterbury, Vermont. If you're ever in the Waterbury area, you should definitely stop by there and take a tour. In fact, if you are there during the summer you might run across one of my lovely sisters. Reason itself for going, I think.
Of course, if you are in the Waterbury area it's probably because you are already on your way to the factory. Waterbury has little else to boast of.
Besides my lovely sisters.
Oh, and parents. (hi, mom!)
I've been playing around with the idea of making a chocolate sandwich cookie filled with cookie dough for a little while. I love how the two of them taste together. I mean, what's not to love? Brownies, cookie dough . . . awesome, right? I tried a couple chocolate cookie recipes but none were "brownie" enough or soft enough for me. Then I got the bright idea to leave out the raspberry extract and sugar coating from these cookies and found that they were perfect. Soft, chocolatey, delicious.
The next step was a cookie dough filling. I only want to make people sick from overeating, not salmonella, so I worked on a filling that was eggless but still held together well. I had tried a few cookie dough dips that used cream cheese but they didn't really taste like cookie dough to me. More like cream cheese. In fact, this might be the one time I know of where cream cheese didn't make something taste better. Eventually I tried using marshmallow creme, which worked really well for the filling. It held it together and provided some sweetness. I also figured out that any filling without flour didn't really taste like cookie dough, so I put some of that in, too. Ditto for the vanilla extract.
The end result are some sandwich cookies that have great brownie and chocolate chip cookie dough flavor. The brownie cookies are very chocolatey, so make sure you use a good size scoop of filling between the sandwich layers. That's right, I'm telling you that it's necessary. You just have to. You're welcome.
Brownie Cookie Dough Sandwiches
Published 04/02/2011
Prep Time: 20 min
Cook time: 35 min
Ingredients
For the Cookies:
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
For the Filling:
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 1 13 oz container marshmallow creme
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/3 cup mini chocolate chips
Instructions
For the Cookies:
- Heat oven to 350 degrees.
- In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar and white sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and then the eggs one at a time, beating well with each addition. Combine the salt, cocoa, flour, baking powder and baking soda and gradually stir into the creamed mixture.
- Shape dough into 1 1/2 T sized balls and place on a baking sheet. Flatten cookies slightly with the bottom of a drinking glass or your palm.
- Bake 8-10 minutes or until the cookies are puffy and the tops are cracked, but still soft. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.
For the Filling:
- With an electric mixer, cream butter until fluffy. Add sugar and beat well. Add flour and beat until all the flour is incorporated. Add remaining ingredients and beat until mixture is smooth. (It will be fairly thick).
Assembling the Sandwiches:
- Scoop about 3T of filling onto to bottom of a cooled cookie. Top with another cookie and eat.
Prep Time: 20 min
Cook time: 35 min
