TWD: Dulce de Leche

This weeks TWD was chosen by Jodie of Beansy Loves Cake. She chose Dorie's Dulce De Leche Duos on page 161 of her Baking: From My Home to Yours cookbook.

Last year, I learned how to make my own dulce de leche by boiling cans of sweetened condensed milk (which I always have in the cabinet). I had done two cans and had one of those cans left over. I had been trying to figure out what I wanted to do with it, so when this recipe was chosen this month I knew that this was one of my weeks I would be baking. This recipe, like a lot of Dorie's recipes, was easy to put together. I scooped my cookies with a small scoop(apprx. 2 tsp. I think) and I got 72-74 cookies.

I put melted bittersweet chocolate on half of the cookies and made a buttercream with the rest of the dulce de leche to put on the chocolate after it hardened(I just stuck them in the fridge to speed up the process). I sandwiched the cookies with the plain cookie and we were good to go. These cookies were soft and chewy with a little crunch from the chocolate. Surprisingly enough the cookies were not extremely sweet like I though they would be since it had sugar plus dulce de leche. Then again, maybe us sweet tooth people don't realize sweetness because we eat so much sugar that we wouldn't know it until the cavity or diabetes comes.

I wish I had measured my buttercream ingredients to give you a more accurate recipe, but I didn't. I know that it included 1 stick of room temperature butter, the rest of the can of dulce de leche, a little shortening(to help it be able to stay at room temp w/o melting), enough powdered sugar to the consistency you want your buttercream to be, a little milk and some vanilla extract. If you know your cookies won't be sitting for long you can omit the shortening and add a little more butter. With the shortening, this buttercream stays like the oreo cream.

Run, don't walk to your kitchen and make these cookies, because they are just that good. Check out Jodie's site for the recipe, or just buy Dorie's cookbook so you will be able to bake some of her other great recipes.