Peanut Butter Shortbread Sandwich Cookies

I was so excited for the first day of spring tomorrow.  I set aside some light jackets to be dry cleaned, started some spring house cleaning and got out my sunny daisy cookie cutters.  Then I went outside to walk the dog.  Ugh.  Who put the winter in my spring???

By the time I got home and thawed out, I was feeling more like making hot soup than sunny daisy cookies.  But, on the theory that if you build it, they will come, I went ahead and made the cheery cookies.  I love plain shortbread and almond shortbread so this time I incorporated some peanuts into the dough for a great nutty cookie to compliment a peanut buttery filling.  Enjoy!








Ingredients

Peanut Shortbread:
2 Cups all purpose flour
1/2 Cup peanuts, crushed
1/2 Cup sugar
1/2 Teaspoon salt
1 Stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 Egg
1 Teaspoon vanilla
1 Tablespoon peanut butter

Peanut Butter Filling:
1 oz. Cream cheese
2 oz. Prepared whipped topping
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/4 Cup peanut butter
1 Teaspoon vanilla
Pinch of sea salt

Add the egg and sugar to a bowl and beat together using a stand or hand mixer.  Add in the butter, peanut butter and vanilla and continue beating until incorporated.  Sift together the flour, crushed peanuts and salt and add to the egg mixture.  Note that, if you're using a hand mixer, you may find it easier to incorporate the flour by hand with a spoon since the dough will be thick.  Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 20 minutes while you make the filling.

Make the filling by beating together the cream cheese, whipped topping, sugar, peanut butter, vanilla and salt.  If the mixture seems too thick to spread, you can add a tablespoon of milk to thin it out.

If you're just making round cookies, scoop out about an ounce of dough, place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and flatten out each scoop with the palm of your hand.  If you'd like to make cut out cookies, roll the dough out on the parchment paper, cut with your favorite cutter but leave the cookie in place and simply peel the dough away from the sides.  You can keep the cookies pretty close together because this dough will not spread.  Bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for approximately 12 minutes.  The cookie edges will only be barely browned and the cookie itself will still be soft.  Remove from the oven and let rest on the baking sheet for a few minutes until the cookies harden a bit.  Then transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Once cooled, place a heaping teaspoon of filling between two cookies and sandwich them together.  Using a 3" cutter I got 24 cookies which made a dozen sandwiched cookies.  As tempted as I was to devour this whole batch by myself, I resisted (OK, I may have sampled one) because these were destined to be mailed out to my sweet friend, Carla, and I hope she enjoys them.