4 Levels of Sandwich Cookies: Amateur to Food Scientist

[upbeat music]

I'm Bianca and I'm a level one chef.

I'm Gabrielle and I'm a level two chef.

Hi, I'm Bill, I'm the co-owner

and pastry chef of MeMe's Diner

and I've been a baker for over 10 years.

[upbeat music]

We know everyone's favorite cookie is Oreo,

but the perfect labor of love is homemade Oreos.

So these cookies are called alfajores de maicena.

It's going to be a really buttery,

almost shortbread like cookie with dulce de leche

in the middle and then we're gonna roll it in coconut.

Today I'm making a pretzel linzer cookie

with a chocolate peanut butter ganache.

Everybody loves chocolate and peanut butter.

This cookie is inspired by a cookie

from Lost Bread in Philadelphia.

They have a pretzel shortbread,

which is one of my favorite cookies ever.

We're gonna start by making the dough.

We have flour and we're gonna mix some cocoa powder.

And add a tinch of baking soda.

Mmm, smells like chocolate.

I'm going to go ahead and sift my flour

and corn starch and baking powder.

I really love that this recipe uses corn starch,

probably one of the most important elements of this cookie.

And I think it's also a testament to this region

and Argentina and Peru, where corn is such a valuable

and important part of the culture.

And baking powder.

I'm gonna start by grinding some pretzels.

These are just store-bought pretzels.

It's essentially pretzel flour with some chunks in it.

I'm gonna add these to the flour,

and that's all of our dry ingredients.

We're gonna start by creaming butter, sugar, and salt.

This is gonna help us create a light and fluffy goodness.

I am an amateur at this mixer as well.

Okay, oh, let's not get too crazy.

And I'm gonna let this go for about two minutes.

I want it to really incorporate,

and I want it to be really smooth and really fluffy.

I'm gonna add one egg yolk.

It's not at all hard to separate an egg yolk.

Oh, oh, I, I totally...

Take two, there we go.

Now it looks like a little pile of sunshine.

Did you hear the crack?

So we're gonna mix the eggs.

Oh, oh, oh!

Time to add in my vanilla.

Next and last step for making this dough is

just adding your dry ingredients.

I'm gonna go ahead and add these all in at one time.

I'm gonna do this in three batches.

[Bianca] Okay.

You really don't wanna overwork this dough.

You want it to be nice and tender

and sandie like a shortbread.

I'm doing a little bit at a time

so everything is incorporating evenly,

and it's just easier to manage that way too.

When I have all the flour in there at once,

it's just really challenging to incorporate.

You really want to make sure

that this is thoroughly combined

so that you don't have little streaks

of just butter and sugar in your dough.

Because when you have these cookies,

they'll just kind of melt little holes in them.

You want them to be nice and firm and together.

I hope what I'm doing right now is

what I was supposed to be doing, but we'll see.

It's smelling like three o'clock coming home after school.

My mom already has the cookies in the oven.

It's giving me flashbacks.

This is the dough.

We're just going to form this into a disc,

wrap it up and put it in the fridge.

I really like the lemon zest.

It just adds like a nice brightness of flavor.

You don't need to use a ton 'cause you don't want it

to overpower the flavor of the cookie.

You just kind of want a nice little kiss of lemon.

I'm really bad about working plastic wrap.

We're just gonna kind of gently pat it into a disc.

So I'm gonna form this into a long log.

It's not staying on the wrap, but you know what?

You gotta improvise, so I think this is a better idea.

This is my dough,

and I'm gonna go and put this into the fridge

for an hour and then we're gonna roll it out.

All right, this has been resting

in the fridge for an hour.

We're gonna let it come up a little bit

to room temperature, just so it's easier to work with.

So I'm gonna roll this out between two pieces of parchment.

I am gonna use a little bit of flour.

So I'm just going to take some

and sprinkle and spread it around,

because we don't want this sticking.

Our dough has been in the fridge for about an hour

and now we're ready to slice them into cookies.

You want these cookies to be pretty thin,

but you also want to make sure

that they're not burning in the oven.

That's really important too.

You'd think I'd have beefier forearms

from rolling out all of the dough I do.

And there we go, that looks pretty good.

So now we're going to slice them

about a quarter of an inch.

Now, in half of these, so in 10 of the rounds,

we're gonna cut out a one-inch round

as like a little window for the ganache to peek through.

You can see I'm cutting it out

just to like the little bit of a side.

I can already kind of see some places

where they're a little thicker than others.

And that's fine.

Now, these will have a little bit of a rustic look

to them because they do have those nice crispy

chunky pieces of pretzel in them.

But you want to keep them as nice and crisp as possible.

I'm gonna take these and put them in the freezer

for like 10, 15 minutes to get them nice and firm

and then we'll come back and finish them up.

So now we're just going to place our cookies

in the baking pan.

When I space my cookies apart, I kind of just go

with the flow and what looks good,

but also you could just separate it by your finger.

They should be maybe like an inch apart.

You don't want them to be too close together

because they will expand a little bit.

These have been in the freezer for 10, 15 minutes.

They're nice and chill, nice and hard.

We're going to make our lye mixture.

So I'm gonna add this powdered lye to cold water.

You want it to be cold because you just don't want

to be dipping your cookie dough into warm water.

Again, be really careful when working with lye

because it will, if it gets onto your skin,

it will essentially take the fats and oils in your skin

and start making them into soap.

I'm gonna put my gloves on.

Let's get to work.

So I'm gonna just gently dip it.

Try and get it all the way up the sides.

Kind of shake off the excess

and then let it dry over there.

Lye is used in traditional pretzel making.

When you see a pretzel, that's got that kind of glossy,

mahogany appearance on the outside, that's the lye bath.

It also adds that like very specific pretzel tang

to the outside, which is why we're using it in this cookie,

because it really kind of gives it that extra pretzel umph.

It smells good.

I mean, it doesn't look as good as it smells.

We'll see, TBD.

On to our sprayed sheet pan I'm gonna put these.

They've been drip drying for just a couple seconds.

We're gonna pop these in the freezer

for about five minutes just to get them nice and firm again.

And then I'm gonna top them with the pretzel salt

and put them in the oven.

All right, these have been in the freezer

for about five minutes.

This is pretzel salt, just nice and coarse.

You want to do just a little bit on these, not too much.

Our cookies, they're cut and ready to go.

And now we're gonna put them in the oven.

My cookies are now shaped and ready to go into the oven

at about 350 degrees for between nine and 11 minutes.

All right, I'm gonna throw these in the oven

at 350 for about 12 minutes.

While my cookies are baking, I'm going to make my filling.

Okay, so we're gonna mix the butter with powdered sugar,

vanilla extract, with a pinch of salt.

Mix it for maybe about five minutes.

Shout out to all the moms, the grandmas,

the aunties that does this by hand.

This is not a joke, okay?

We are going to go ahead and make my filling,

which is none other than dulce de leche.

Today we're gonna making it in an instant pot.

This is definitely the fastest way and the safest way.

Sweetened, condensed milk, cover this lid,

wrap it around, putting this in my instant pot.

I'm trying to avoid getting water on the can.

It doesn't matter that much.

How do you get it to like twist on?

Just like that.

Turn it on high and pressure cook,

and it's set for 40 minutes and we're good to go, that easy.

We're gonna quickly make our ganache.

I've got dark chocolate here.

This is 70% cocoa, you can use really

whatever you have on hand.

So we've got some cream here, just heavy cream,

and I'm going to heat it up just under a boil,

like a strong simmer.

You just want to give this a chop.

The only thing that's gonna be melting this is the heat

of the cream, so you want it to be kind of

in smaller pieces to make it easier.

That looks good.

It's giving me light and fluffy goodness.

The child in me wants to lick this so badly.

This is our cream filling.

Now my sweetened condensed milk has transformed

into dulce de leche.

Release the steam.

Whoo!

Whoo, it's still a little wet.

I'm gonna peel this off very carefully.

Ooh!

The color has completely transformed

and now it's that really pretty caramely color.

Exactly kind of the consistency.

And it smells incredible.

So this is what we wanted.

All right, there we go.

See, we're just starting to boil here.

I'm gonna take this hot cream

and pour it right over our chocolate.

I'm also gonna go ahead and add the corn syrup right now.

You can add this while it's hot.

I'm just gonna let this sit for a few minutes

to let all that chocolate get nice and soft.

And once we do, we're gonna whisk it.

Ganache is one of my favorite things

because it always seems a little bit like magic.

I'm gonna pour this into the bowl using this.

It's not quite perfect, but once I give this a good stir,

then everything will kind of be a little more uniform

and it will congeal together in the way that I want to.

And once it cools a little bit too,

the texture won't be quite so liquidy.

And that's going to be really nice

when I'm using it to bind together my two cookies.

This is looking really good.

And my dulce de leche is ready to go.

This has been setting for a few minutes,

should be nice and soft.

We're just gonna go ahead and whisk this together.

Kind of feel around and make sure

you don't have any real hard chunks of chocolate

before you go ahead and mix it.

It seems like we're doing pretty good.

We're gonna go ahead now and add our peanut butter

and our room temperature butter.

Now, this is the all natural peanut butter,

the kind that will separate in the jar, which is nice.

And then just our butter until it's nice and blended.

Nice and glossy.

This is the peanut butter chocolate ganache.

It's all set.

We're gonna let it sit for a minute.

Then we're going to put it in a piping bag

and fill our cookies.

Okay, so we're back.

We let them cool a little bit

because ultimately if they don't cool

and you put the cream on too quickly,

the cream will melt. Melt.

Didn't space them out as much as I could have,

but you know what you say?

You say, this is how I wanted them.

That's what you say.

You can see that the lye gave this

that nice glossy sort of pretzel, classic pretzel look.

You've got the little salt on there.

It just like kind of reads as a pretzel.

You know that this is a pretzel,

and you wouldn't get that if it wasn't for the lye glaze.

I'm going to grab a nice generous gob

of this dulce de leche.

I might not need all of this, but I am not opposed

to laying on the filling nice and thick

because we are then going to be rolling these

in shredded coconut, so you wanna have enough that

when you go ahead and pop on your top cookie

you have a nice amount that's poking through

that's gonna just be nicely rolled.

And I'm gonna go ahead and just roll the edges,

right like that.

Make sure it gets in all those nooks and crannies.

And then alfajores de maicena.

Onto the plate.

They're breaking apart on me now, no!

We didn't let let them cool long enough,

so right now we have like a little cookie crumble

Oreo cake going on right here.

I'm telling you, party stopper.

You bring these in the party will stop,

but in a good way, then it will resume

after everyone has eaten the cookies.

You're gonna put the ganache on the bottom

of the cookies, pipe a bit in the middle.

My dollop of ganache on here.

I've got the top here.

We're just gonna put these two together.

Give it a nice little wiggle to settle it in there.

And there's your cookie.

It's looking kind of good.

Some of them got little cracks,

but I don't think that will take away from the taste.

I'm being generous, you just kind of have to be.

Because otherwise you don't,

you don't want them to look skimpy.

You don't want those skimpy cookies.

You want it to be nicely filled.

All right, oh yes!

A nice little dollop, about that much.

And the top of the cookie on there like that.

Voila, these are my sandwich cookies, homemade Oreos.

These are my sandwich cookies.

These are my pretzel linzer cookies

with chocolate peanut butter ganache.

It's time to give these a taste.

Okay, here we go.

It's giving me more cake than cookie,

but the chocolate, the taste of chocolate is really great.

The dulce de leche is super just soft.

And the coconut adds just a little bit

of extra something in texture.

The citrus just brightens up the sweetness

from the dulce de leche and from the cookies themselves.

Oh my gosh, it's so good.

I love these like little crunchy bits

of the pretzel in the sort of shortbread texture.

It's not so like just a sandie all the way through.

I don't know.

And the salt on top, I'm a sucker for salt.

So it's a good cookie.

If I made these again, I definitely

would slice the dough a bit thinner.

The smaller they are, the more likely they are

to maintain its shape.

But overall, I'd give it a okay.

No, not an excellent, but an A for effort.

Different people have different strategies

of eating their sandwich cookie.

I eat a sandwich cookie as one whole piece.

You've got the top, the bottom and the filling.

It's a sandwich cookie for a reason.

This is the way it was intended

and this is the way I'm gonna eat it, for sure.

Oh yeah, it's so good.

Sandwich cookies are a delectable treat

with endless options for combining flavors and textures.

Let's see how each of our chefs made theirs.

Bianca made a chocolate sandwich cookie

that looks a lot like an Oreo.

She used the creaming method for her cookie base,

which means she mixed her butter

and granulated sugar together to increase volume

and porosity to her cookie dough.

The sugar crystals force small holes in the solid

but soft butter, essentially aerating the butter.

Gabby made a South American-inspired sandwich cookie.

Like Bianca, she used the creaming method,

but instead of using only all purpose flour,

Gabby used a combination of all purpose flour

plus cornstarch.

Cornstarch has no gluten proteins,

while all purpose flour does.

In a cookie, we don't want gluten development.

By using a combination of these two starches,

Gabby's ensuring that she has a very tender cookie

that crumbles into sweetness once you start to eat it.

Bill made a delicious, slightly savory original cookie

that has some of the flavors of a soft pretzel,

but with a tender, crumbly shortbread texture.

Like Bianca and Gabby, Bill also used the creaming method

but added ground pretzels along with his dry ingredients.

He wanted to include the slightly puffery tang

that comes from pretzels because they're dipped

in food grade lye prior to boiling and baking.

The lye raises the pH of the outside of the pretzel,

making it more alkaline and expediting Maillard browning,

which happens very rapidly under alkaline conditions.

That's why pretzels are very dark on the outside

and still quite white on the inside.

I don't know why lye is caustic and dangerous

until it's baked.

Maybe that's a great question for the food scientist.

There are many chemical reactions that happen

once heat is applied, but it's basically

because the caustic lye reacts

with the carbon dioxide and water

and proteins present to form non-toxic sodium carbonate,

making it safe to eat.

It's the sodium carbonate that has the slightly

soapy taste associated with pretzels.

Bianca made a simple uncooked blend

of confectioners sugar and butter

with a bit of vanilla extract and a pinch of salt.

It's thick and sweet, but it might not be

the smoothest filling for her cookie.

Confectioner sugar has a smaller particle size

than table sugar, but it's still won't dissolve completely

in the water and the butter, so you might detect

some particulate when you eat it.

It's a labor of love.

Gabby made dulce de leche as her filling.

She took a can of sweetened condensed milk,

which is made from milk that has 15% sugar by volume added

and then reduced it to concentrate the milk

to approximately one-third its former volume.

It's high in sugar and fat.

The sugar is caramelized and Maillard reaction occurs

with the milk proteins and sugars.

And she ended up with a caramel sauce that was dark, smooth

and full of complex caramel and dairy flavors.

There's something really satisfying

about making your own dulce de leche.

Bill made a chocolate peanut butter ganache,

which is why he is our level three chef.

It's simply sublime.

Ganache is chocolate that's been emulsified with cream,

and it's delicious.

Ganache is one part chocolate and one part heated cream.

He whipped in peanut butter,

which added a roasted, nutty, slight saltiness

to this rich ganache and gave it a spreadable texture.

That's a good cookie.

No matter how you fill them,

sandwich cookies are delicious,

with so many possibilities for flavor combinations.

Next time you're in the mood for a sweet treat,

we hope you'll take some tips

from our three talented chefs and spend a few hours baking.

It's worth the reward afterward.