Peach shaped sandwich cookies with dulce de leche filling

My yesterday’s post was about how to make homemade Dulce de Leche from sweetened condensed milk, and today’s recipe is one of the ways to use Dulce de Leche in a dessert: in a peach sandwich cookie. I guess with this post I am officially opening the season of holiday baking on my blog!

This cookie recipe is very dear to my heart. I first saw these peach shaped cookies being made on TV when I was a child. It was the most beautiful cookie I’ve ever seen in my life and I was mesmerized. I’ve asked my mom to make them and she did. The cookies did not disappoint. They tasted as good as they looked. I recently made these for my husband for the first time, and he is now hooked too. So, if you’re thinking of making something different this Christmas baking season, try these peach cookies with Dulce de Leche filling.

Peach shaped sandwich cookies with Dulce de Leche filling

Prep time: 35 min
Bake time: 1 hr

Ingredients for cookie dough::

2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) room temperature unsalted butter
1/4 cup sour cream
1 3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda

Ingredients for filling:

2 cans Dulce de Leche (boiled sweetened condensed milk)
3/4 cup walnuts

Natural coloring agents and sugar for dusting:

1/2 cup beet juice
1/2 cup carrot juice
1 cup sugar for coating cooked cookies

To prepare filling:

Prepare Dulce de Leche filling at least 1 day in advance – see my step-by-step tutorial on how to make Dulce de Leche from sweetened condensed milk . Dulce de Leche should be prepare in advance so that it has time to cool off and thicken. Make sure to boil sweetened condensed milk for 3 hours (no less), because you want Dulce de Leche to be as thick as possible – to glue 2 sandwich cookies together.

To prepare dough:

1) Preheat oven to 350. Beat 2 eggs with 3/4 cup sugar on high speed until the mixture is white. Add softened butter, sour cream and continue beating to reach even consistency.

2) Mix flour with baking soda and add to the egg mixture, beating until well combined. Refrigerate dough for at least 2 hours (or put it in the freezer for 30-40 minutes, then in the refrigerator for 20 minutes).

3) Remove cookie dough from refrigerator. Grease baking sheet. Flour your working surface and immediately form 12 balls from the cookie dough, not allowing them to warm. These 12 balls will be halves of 6 “peaches”. If necessary, put cookie dough ball back in the freezer for 10-15 minutes.

4) Place all 12 balls of cookie dough on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Don’t bake for longer than 20 minutes to avoid hardening the cookies.

5) Cool cookies (baked halves of “peaches”) for about 20-30 minutes. Then, using a spoon, and while cookies are still warm, create as large of an indentation (hole) inside the flat side of each “cookie” as you can. Refer to photos that follow below.

To assemble and color:

1) Place 1 cup of sugar in a shallow bowl.

2) Fill the indentation of each cookie half with dulce de leche and add whole pieces of walnuts inside each indentation. Make sure dulce de leche has been cooled in the refrigerator for at least 5 hours before using it, otherwise it will be runny. Brush the flat side of the cookies with more dulce de leche. Then, bring 2 parts of pastry to glue together with Dulce de Leche and sandwich them together to create peach-shaped sandwich cookie.

3) Quickly deep one side of the peach-shaped pastry into beet juice and the other side into carrot juice. Then, roll the pastry in sugar to coat it nicely. Put it immediately in the refrigerator otherwise Dulce de Leche might leak out of the cookie. Repeat this with each pastry. Keep the tray with 6 peach-shaped cookies in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour before serving. You can keep those cookies for a week, keep them refrigerated before serving.