Cookie of the Month - Chocolate Cream Filled Shortbread

These tasty shortbread cookies were supposed to be heart shaped for Valentine's Day, but the Scholarship Auction Cookie of the Month winners were in Mexico, so the cookies came after Valentine's Day and they were round.

To keep them from looking too boring, I stamped them.  I thought since the recipe did not call for baking soda or eggs, the cookies wouldn't rise and the imprint would remain sharp and intact through baking.  This was true for the most part, but they did puff up a little.

Here are your ingredients for the dough:

2 cups butter

1 cup white sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

4 cups flour

For the chocolate filling:

8 oz. heavy cream (whipping cream-unwhipped, of course!)

2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (about a 12 oz. bag)

Not very complicated.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Put the butter and sugar in your mixing bowl.

 

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy and stir in vanilla.

Add flour and mix well to get your shortbread dough.

Cover and place in the fridge for about an hour.

 

I gathered together some candidates for stamping my cookies.

What to use?

The bottom of a square milk glass bowl was decided upon.

 

With as little flour as possible, lay out some dough on the counter and roll flat.  I used a cloth covered rolling pin.  I wanted to make my cookies fairly flat because they were going to be sandwich cookies and I didn't want them to be monster thick when all three layers got together.

Using a little more flour, I pressed the bowl into the dough firmly.

Voilá!  Stamped dough!

Using a biscuit cutter, I centered the star pattern and cut out the rounds.

Cookies were then moved to a parchment covered cookie sheet.

Place cookies 1/2 to 1" apart.  Chill for a few minutes more.

Bake for 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and slide cookies, parchment and all off the cookie sheet and onto a table or counter for cooling.

 In a small sauce pan, scald the heavy cream.  Scalding is just barely bringing it to a boil.  Remove from heat and stir in the bag of chocolate chips.  Let cool.

This will turn into a pasty, yummy, wicked ganache.

Just the right consistency for spreading onto the backside of a cookie.

Press another cookie back to back and you have a sandwich!

A bit fussy, but oh so worth it!  Delicious!