Have a seat, so I can get to the bottom of these delightful little treats. They may look like candied peaches, BUTT they're not!
I saw multiple recipes for these cookies on Pinterest over the past few months and I knew I had to try them. The crazy thing, however, was that each of the recipes I looked at were all slightly different. Some made them out to be more like macarons, while others had a pastry creme filling or used ricotta. I kind of took what I thought was the most straight forward parts from all of the recipes I looked at and made my own hybrid version of this cookie. Luckily they are surprisingly easy to make. The most time consuming part was waiting for them to dry!
If you like a sweet cookie, these are right up your alley. They did end up being slightly too sweet for my taste - guys they are literally rolled in sugar - but I had some while drinking orange juice and that drastically cut the sweetness, so I think if you are drinking something acidic it will balance out your taste buds. You can also omit the sugar coating all together, or you can use your favorite peach chutney recipe instead of peach jam for a pop of freshness - just make sure it's diced very very small. Regardless, they are stupidly adorable and you're sure to impress anyone you share these with, and I cannot lie... you other brothers can't... okay okay I'll stop...
Servings: Makes ~ 3 doz sandwiches
Prep Time: 30 min
Total Time: 1 hr
INGREDIENTS:
3 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup milk (I used almond milk)
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
6 cups flour
1 jar of peach jam (you can use apricot jam too!)
Yellow and red food coloring
Extra milk for dipping
Extra sugar for rolling
Mint leaves for garnish
DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees and place parchment paper or silicon baking mats on 2 cookie sheets.
2. In a bowl, combine the eggs and 2 cups sugar with an electric mixer (I used my stand mixer) until it is a pale yellow - roughly 3 minutes.
3. Continue beating while you add the oil, milk, cream, and vanilla. Mix well for 2 minutes.
4. Finally, add the salt, baking powder, and flour. Stop mixing after it has just barely combined. It will be similar in texture to a pâte à choux (if you've ever made cream puffs), just more dense.
5. Now we get to form the cookies! Using your hands, roll the dough into small balls that are about an inch across - you want to have uniform sized cookies so the sides match up when you stick them together! Place these on your prepared cookie sheets. They can be placed about an inch and a half apart because they don't rise too much when they bake.
6. Once you have filled up both cookie sheets, bake them for 10 minutes. You want the bottoms of the cookie to be barely kissed with color. If they get too dark, they will crumble when you try to assemble them. Let them cool for 5 minutes.
7. Using a small, sharp knife, carefully carve a well into the bottom of each cookie. Save the crumbs that you cut out of the cookies for your filling.
8. Mix about a third of the crumbs with the jam. Fill the depressions you cut out of each cookie with your jam mixture and place two cookies together - using the peach filling as the glue that holds the sandwich together. Remove any excess filling that seeps out of the seam between the cookies.
9. Once your cookies have been successfully made into sandwiches, it's time to make them pretty! I recommend setting up a little assembly line on your counter to cut down on the mess and the number of times you have to wash your hands. You will need two bowls, each with a half cup of milk in them. Put 3 drops of red food coloring in one bowl and 3 drops of yellow food coloring in the other. Mix each bowl to color the milk. Have a plate with a few paper towels on it nearby and another bowl that is filled with sugar. and Finally, lay some wax paper out on the counter or on some cookie sheets. If you follow this set up, you will thank me later.
10. Take each sandwich and dunk them, one at a time, in the colored milk. I started by dunking them in the yellow milk and then dunking them in the red milk. This allows the cookie to have that distinctive peachy coloring. HOWEVER, make sure you don't let the cookies sit in the milk for too long or they will start to disintegrate - you have to be quick with this. Once colored, set each sandwich on that plate with the paper towel to allow any excess milk to drip off. Let them sit on that plate for 1-2 minutes.
11. Roll the colored sandwiches in the sugar and then place the finished product on the wax paper. Allow the sandwiches to dry for at least an hour before eating or moving them from the wax paper. Garnish with mint leaves and bask in the awe and applause of all your friends.
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