TWD: Dulce de Leche Duos
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
This week Tuesdays with Dorie was chosen by Jodie of Beansy Loves Cake. I’m not a huge cookie fan; if they are there I will eat one... But for the most part they are not my first choice sweet.
Unlike cake. Yes, I’m a cake person. There I said it, you know how to get me do anything now, show me cake and I’m done for.
But, I love dulce de leche. I actually love sweetened condensed milk more. And I have to come clean and confess that I usually keep an open jar in the refrigerator and when I want a hit of something sweet, I take it out and eat a spoon of it and close my eyes and go far away in a… oh, wait were was I? Oh, yeah cookies.
This ingredient for me was nothing new. I was raise in South American. And dulce de leche was something that I grew up with. At school they would sell them in tiny cans, which you would pop open and just eat as an afternoon snack. You will see it as ingredients in many desserts, so when I read this recipe I knew that it was going to be good and it was going to be sweet. Plus I had 2 jar of the stuff that I brought back from my trip to Argentina.
I love desserts.
I just don’t love very sweet desserts. And this not only had dulce de leche in the batter, but brown sugar and regular sugar! Yikes! Can you say sugar overload?
The batter went without any problems. Mix the dry ingredients, and then whip the butter, add the sugars and eggs and then incorporate the dry and whip some more.
The batter was good and not so over sweet. I had hope.
I used my handy small scooper to set them up in the baking sheet and since I had no idea if these cookies spread out during baking … I decided to space them out a bit more than 2” as the book called. I was able to set up a total of 52 mounds (2 sheets) so I used the first sheet as the “testing” one and the other two went into the freezer to wait.
I was right, after 12 minutes the cookies were all over the place, I took them out and touched them, and they seem super soft to me, but the book said to take them and out and that I did. I waited about 10 minutes before trying to transfer them to a cooling rack and decided that they were not cooked after doing a taste test… so back in the oven they went. Along with those that have been waiting in the freezer.
And here is where you realized that sometimes cookbooks do not give you full disclosure. Because the cookies in the sheets that were cold, came out perfect. They did not spread out as the first batch and they cooked to the right consistency in the 18 minutes, not the 12 the recipe called for.
The next part was pretty easy, spread the dulce de leche on the flat bottoms and sandwich them together. Out came out 26 cookies.
Tasting panel:
Tom loved them, and he said there were not too sweet. (he is nuts!)
The little man also like them and said they were perfect to dunk into cold milk and he did just that.
Me: I did not like them, I figure that once I tasted the batter the cookie was going to be ok, but once baked the sugars intensified, giving a very strong caramel taste and the dulce the leche spread is already super sweet which increases the sweet factor even more.
You can find the full recipe over at Jodie’s blog
Reader Comments (16)
Me and you. We're on the same page. I like cookies but I LOVE cake. Maybe that's why I liked these cookies though. They had a cake-like texture. Bummer you weren't a fan. I upped the salt in my cookie dough so even though they were sweet I think the salt really balanced it out for me. These might be my favorite cookie now.
-CB
http://iheartfood4thought.com
I liked the cookies alone, but not so much w/the DDL. Way too sweet for me! Some other bakers recommended upping the amount of salt and decreasing the sugar in the original cookie recipe. I think that would have helped a lot!
They look fantastic in the first picture! I thought they would be too sweet too, and so I left out the white sugar, but then they didn't spread at all. Good tip about refrigerating them. I'll make a note, but I think I'll stick with alfajore cookies with my dulce de leche from now on. I used the same brand of dulce do leche in my second batch--it's my favourite!!
So, are you excited about the cake for next week? I've already made it--cake is my favourite too.
:)
Hi Monica,
The cake is quite quick and easy. It was even light for a bundt cake. I think beating the eggs and sugar really well helped a lot. I used fresh coconut and cardamom, but I found with 1 teaspoon that you couldn't really taste it. I only tasted coconut, but it was still good!
I just got the Heavenly Cakes book, but have only made the carrot cake so far. I am making it as a wedding cake and so had to try it out. It was delicious.
Looks so good! I didnt know you can buy Delce de Luce in a tub like this! Love your photos as always!
Wow, they sure do look pretty! Sorry you didn't love them... but there's always next week :)
-www.daisylanecakes.blogspot.com
Great looking cookies! I may try to make these tomorrow.
Beautiful photos! I think chilling cookie dough is pretty much always a good idea, even if the recipe doesn't call for it.
they were a hit with us too!!! nice job :)
you have GREAT color and texture in your cookies.
Aren't you lucky to have the real thing in your pantry! I loved your stories about how popular dulce de leche is in South America. Your cookies look great, but I thought they were too sweet, too.
Dulce de Leche was totally new to me, I liked it though. The cookies combined with the DLL-filling were too sweet for me.
Your cookies are gorgeous! I will be sure to have my pans be properly chilled before I bake the cookies next time! They have a gorgeous shape!
Your DDL looks AWESOME--so dark and rich. They know how to do it in Argentina! I agree with you--these were not the cookies for me--but at least you had some picture-perfect results.
GREAT
GREAT looking cookies. They were pretty sweet but oh so good. Drizzled mine with bittersweet ganache and that helped.
Monica, what a beautiful blog! Squarespace must really rock but the photos and writing are lovely too. I love condensed milk a bit too much too - I wrote a story about how I was once addicted to it - seriously though, no joke, I was at half a can a day at one point. Did you know you can get it in a tube?!