Renana's Kitchen blog
Alfajores - Dulce de leche sandwich cookies
July 24, 2018
These sweet and yummy cookies are my favorite! They were first made in Spain and later on in South America. Many versions exist worldwide and each country has a slightly different recipe. My recipe tends to be more like the South American recipe that uses cornstarch, therefore the cookies are soft and melt in your mouth - heaven!
The Alfajor cookies are filled with Dulce de leche, a caramelized condensed milk. You can make your own homemade Dulce de leche but I think store bought is good enough when it comes to these cookies. If you do not like caramel taste (who are you?) than you can fill them with chocolate spread instead or any other spread that you prefer.
The baking time is very short, therefor they are great to make during summer time when it's more difficult to stay in a hot kitchen for long!
You can use any cookie cutter to shape the alfajores cookies; the classic shape is a circle. I like to create them in a heart shape - because I just love alfajores!
I hope you enjoy them as much as I do, here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
- 200 grams/ 1 & 3/4 sticks of unsalted melted butter
- 1 cup of sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon of baking powder
- 500 grams/ 3 & 1/2 cups cornstarch
- 1 cup of flour
- Dulce de leche/chocolate spread and shredded coconut for the filling and garnish.
Preparation:
- In the mixer bowl, beat butter, sugar and vanilla extract.
- Add the eggs one at a time and continue beating.
- Sift in baking powder and cornstarch gradually.
- Mix well.
- Sift in the flour and mix until it’s a unified dough.
- Place the dough on baking paper and shape it as a disc.
- Place the wrapped dough in the fridge for half an hour to rest.
- Heat the oven to 180°C / 360°F fan.
- On a floured surface, roll the dough and cut the cookies into the shape you want.
- Place the cookies on a baking pan lined with baking paper.
- Bake the cookies for 7 minutes - they need to stay very pale.
- Cool the cookies on a wire rack.
- Pair every two cookies into a sandwich with Dulce de leche "glue" in the middle.
- Roll the cookies in shredded coconut so it will stick to the sides.
- Have an Alfajor cookie and enjoy!
To pin the recipe for later click here
