This week Ben had his end of the year parent night at school, where families come to see all the great work their kids have done. The first grade classes do this cute thing called the “Reading Cafe”, where each student dresses up complete with an apron, order pad, and tray holding a few books which the parents can “order” them to read. At the end of it all the parents and kids can also order a cookie – this is where I come in. This is my second year baking the cookies for this event, and I have already decided next year to do bar cookies. Much less work (no rolling/dropping cookies, baking a batch, cooling, doing another batch, etc.) Wish I had thought of that this year!
Anyway, this year I made chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles (to be posted soon) and peanut butter cookies. I have made this recipe before and I knew that there would be far more dough than what I needed. This worked out perfectly because ever since becoming enamored with sandwich cookies, I have been thinking of peanut butter cookies sandwiched with chocolate ganache. I’m so glad I finally made this idea a reality because it was just as wonderful as I imagined. The peanut butter dominates the first taste, but then the chocolate comes in to play and it is a very happy marriage. Just make sure you have a nice glass of milk ready to go along with these! I’m submitting this photo into CLICK for the month of May, with the theme being cookies. Enjoy!
Peanut Butter Chocolate Ganache Sandwich Cookies
Ingredients:
1 half batch of dough for peanut butter crisscrosses
For the ganache:
3/4 cup heavy cream
1 tbsp. butter
9 oz. bittersweet chocolate, broken into 1/4 oz. pieces
Directions:
Bake the cookies according to the original instructions, only make them smaller (I used a small Pampered Chef scoop and baked them for 8-9 minutes). Allow to cool completely.
To make the ganache, heat the heavy cream and the butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil. Place the chocolate in a stainless steel bowl. Pour the boiling cream over the chocolate and allow to stand for 5 minutes. Stir until smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour, or until the ganache has thickened enough to be piped onto a cookie.
Match the cooled cookies up into pairs by size. Turn one cookie of each pair over so that the flat side is facing up. Place the chilled ganache into a plastic bag with a corner snipped off. Pipe a swirl of ganache onto the flat face of each pair. Top with the other cookie of each pair and press it onto the ganache, so that it is pushed to the edges of the sandwich. Refrigerate for 1 hour or until set. Bring to room temperature to serve.
Source: cookies from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, ganache from Chocolate Overdose Cake courtesy of Confections of a Foodie Bride
