This post was made in collaboration with Imerco
Danish vanilla cookie sandwiches with chocolate – a recipe for the most delicious vanilla cookie sandwiches. No Christmas without vaniljekranse! Danish vanilla cookies are my absolute favourite Christmas cookie, and in my opinion they should be served all year round. These vanilla cookies are crispy, full of almonds and vanilla seeds and melt in your mouth, but here I have taken them to the next level. You could call it vanilla cookies 2.0, where they are combined with another of my favourite ingredients: chocolate. Two vanilla cookies are sandwiched together with a velvety chocolate ganache and dipped in dark chocolate. They are delicious with afternoon coffee or a glass of mulled wine, and also work as a small dessert after a big Christmas lunch.
There is something especially cosy about baking vanilla cookies, maybe because they are easiest to make when there are several of you in the kitchen: one to run the dough through the meat mincer and lots of hands to catch the dough strips and shape them into rings. I used a classic meat mincer from Imerco’s Cook & Baker range, which is just as good and sturdy as a proper old-fashioned meat mincer should be.
The fine ridges in the vanilla cookies come from the star shape in the cookie plate you fit in the mincer before running the dough through. It is important to chop the almonds very finely, so coarse pieces don’t block the star shape. Also try my classic Danish vanilla cookies, which are piped with a piping bag. Enjoy!
Vanilla cookie sandwiches
Ingredients
Instructions
Vanilla cookies
Blanch and skin the almonds. Scrape the seeds out of the vanilla pod and mix them with a little of the sugar. Chop the vanilla pod into small pieces. Finely chop the almonds, vanilla sugar and chopped pod in a mini chopper. In a food processor, mix flour and potato starch. Add the cold diced butter and pulse until it is crumbled into the flour. Add the sugar, almond and vanilla mixture and mix. Add the egg and quickly bring the dough together until even.
Put the dough in a freezer bag and chill for at least 30 minutes, preferably until the next day so the flavour can develop. If it has been in the fridge overnight, take it out 30-60 minutes before baking so it isn’t too hard.
Preheat the oven to 200°C (fan). Fit the star plate in the cookie attachment of a meat mincer, put the dough in the mincer and run it through. Support the dough as it comes out and shape pieces of about 10 cm into rings. Place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake in the middle of the oven for about 10 minutes until lightly golden. Keep an eye on them, as the time depends on the oven. Let them cool on a wire rack.
Chocolate ganache
Heat the cream and glucose syrup to just below boiling. Put the chopped chocolate in a tall jug for a stick blender. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and blend. Add the butter and blend again until smooth and glossy. Pour the ganache into a bowl and cover with cling film. Chill for 1-2 hours until firm enough to pipe without spreading.
Put the ganache in a piping bag with a round nozzle. Pipe it onto half of the vanilla cookies and sandwich them together. Chill for about 1 hour before dipping in tempered chocolate.
Tempered chocolate
Put the chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Microwave for 30 seconds and stir. Repeat a few times until the chocolate starts to melt. Then microwave in 10-second bursts 4-5 times, or until the chocolate is 33°C.
Dip the sandwiches halfway in the chocolate and place them on baking paper on eg. a board. Chill until the chocolate has set, then keep them in an airtight cookie tin in the fridge.
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