As a savory chef, this may be blasphemous to say but the best part of any meal for me is the dessert. I am a self-proclaimed chocoholic and one of my favorite treats are chocolate truffles. I love coming up with different flavor combinations because for me, everything's better with chocolate! My husband reminds me constantly though that not everything has to have chocolate in it to be delicious.
Lately I have been baking up a storm. Now that I can turn on my oven and not worry about overheating my house, I can't seem to turn it off. In just two weeks, I have made a caramel apple cheesecake with a pretzel crumb crust, banana bread crumb cake, and mint chocolate ganache sandwich cookies!
In this blog, I'm going to focus on the mint chocolate ganache sandwich cookies. (I told you I was a chocoholic, didn’t I?) But don’t worry, if you want any of the above recipes just ask for them in the comments, and you shall receive.
One of my all-time favorite food combinations has to be mint and chocolate. From my peppermint mocha coffee, to mint chocolate truffles, peppermint bark, even savory lamb with a chocolate rub and mint gremolata. I just can't get enough. For these cookies I adopted a recipe from The Chopping Block from our Fun N Fancy Holiday Cookie Class and added my own little chocolate twist!
Chocolate Ganache Sandwich Cookies
For the cookies:
2 sticks butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 ½ teaspoon vanilla bean paste
2 ¼ cup all purpose flour
In a large bowl or a stand mixer, cream the butter, sugar, cocoa powder, and salt until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes. Then add the egg and vanilla until fully incorporated. Next add all of the flour and mix until smooth. The dough will be pretty thick. You will need to divide the dough in half and roll each half in parchment paper to form a 2 in log about a foot long.
Chill the dough for about an hour before cutting into circles. Preheat your oven to 325 and cut your logs into ⅛ in circles. Remember these are sandwich cookies so the thinner the better. Bake the cookies on a silpat or parchment paper for 10-12 minutes. You want the cookies to be slightly soft still in the middle but crisp on the outer sides. They will continue to harden as they cool.
While the cookies are baking, prepare the ganache. Ganache is just a fancy word for heavy cream and chocolate. Depending on how much cream you add to the chocolate it will either be thick or thin. So if you are glazing making it thinner, if you are decorating making thicker, if you are making a filling like this one make it pretty thick. As the ganache cools down it will set and thicken on its own.
For this recipe, I used 1 whole bag of mint chocolate morsels and 1 cup of heavy cream. To make the ganache, put chocolate in a bowl and just heat the heavy cream in a pot until it boils around the edges. Then pour the cream over the chocolate. Let it sit for a minute and stir then with a rubber spatula until smooth.
To assemble take your cooled cookies and spread them out flat side up. Next, scoop or pipe some of the ganache in the center of half of the cookies. Put another cookie on top and voila, you have a perfect sandwich cookie! To top off these beautiful sandwich cookies I made a thin powdered sugar glaze to act as glue to sprinkle crushed up candy canes on top! The glaze was 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar and 3 tablespoons of milk. It should be very thin, add more milk as needed so it dries clear. Just brush the tops of the cookies and sprinkle on your candy canes.
If you could use some last-minute holiday baking inspiration, download our free guide to Be a Better Baker.
