Recipe Day - Alfajores

I first saw this recipe a while back on Meg's blog Elsie Marley.  I thought they sounded pretty tasty, but it was right before Christmas and I was cookied out.  I had the opportunity to make these this past weekend.  Fantastic!  So I thought I'd share the recipe and my own experience.

Dulce De Leche 

You will need two cans of sweetened condensed milk.

1. Pour condensed milk into a pie plate or shallow baking dish
2. Mix in salt
3. Place baking dish into a larger pan. Pour water into the larger pan until it reaches half way up the sides of the baking dish.
4. Cover the dish tightly with foil.
5. Bake at 400 degrees for 1-2 hours. Checking now and again to stir the milk and making sure there is always water in the larger pan.
6. It will be a beautiful brown and carmel color when it's done. There may be lumps, but you can whisk it a bit (or not). When it cool it should be the consistency of creamy peanut butter.

For The Cookies:

• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
• 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1/2 cup water
• Sanding sugar or powdered sugar, for sprinkling - I used raw washed sugar.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a food processor, pulse together flour, sugar briefly. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal.

3. With machine running, pour in the water in a slow stream, and process 20 seconds.  Meg's directions say that her dough didn't come together, but stayed crumbly.  Mine came together.  I think either one is probably fine. Roll out a length of plastic wrap and put half of the crumbly (or combined) dough onto it. Wrap it up tightly in the plastic wrap, if it's crumbly: then with the heel of your hand press the dough 5-10 times until it comes together. Repeat with the other half of cookie dough.  Flatten into a circle and refrigerate for 1 hour or overnight.

4. Flour your surface and roll out one disk of dough to between 1/4 in and 1/2 in thick. The cookies should be thick, but too thick and you won't be able to fit the finished cookie in your mouth!

5. Cut out rounds from the dough and transfer to a parchment lined cookie sheet. Continue with the rest of the dough. Gather up your scraps and re-roll.

6. Sprinkle half the rounds with sanding sugar or if you don't have sanding sugar, sift powdered sugar on half the baked cookies (when cool).

7.Bake until golden brown and a little puffed up, about 15 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

8. Spread a heaping teaspoon of dulce de leche on half the cookies. Top with the sugar coated cookie and serve. 

I ended up with a lot of left over Dulce De Leche.  Which was bad.  Because I ate it all.  I'm not sure if I made the cookies too thick, or didn't put enough on the cookie sandwiches.  In any case they are yummy!