Ideas for sandwich cookie fillings?

[rajoress]

Hello all,

I recently bought this great rectangular fluted cookie cutter which my mom said - "that would be great for sandwich cookies". So now I've been roped into making these for Jewish New Year (although they're not related to the holiday in any way!). So I've made the chocolate cookies (from Fran Bigelow's chocolate cookbook) but am stumped as to what to fill them with. All I could come up with was white chocolate ganache but I'm afraid that'll be too boring. We already have mint, nuts, apple and honey desserts so trying to think of something different. Anyone have any ideas for sandwich cookie fillings?

Thanks!

Ruth

[heidih]

I like cherries with chocolate. Perhaps simply a cherry marmalade? If you had not already baked them I would have suggested a small hole in the top cookies - just large enough to have a cherry centered in it.

[pastameshugana]

I know you've already got mint - but I'm of the conviction that mint & chocolate together are integral to the stability of the universe. I'd pipe mint filling into those cookies in a heartbeat.

What about something coffee flavored in between?

[heidih]

Another simple marmalade filling would be bitter orange. Sabra liqueur as the filling flavor also sounds good to me.

[JAZ]

This may sound boring, but a combination of sweetened cream cheese lightened with whipped cream is great in chocolate sandwich cookies. Like the best version ever of that 60's icebox cake with Famous chocolate wafers and whipped cream. I use the mixture for a brownie "cheesecake" sundae and students go crazy for it.

[rotuts]

Mocha Cream

Peppermint Cream w very small bits of peppermint candy ( crunch )

and the Queen of them All : Hazelnut (toasted) butter cream!

[BeeZee]

Peanut butter - in ganache form? or maybe just mixed with some confectioner's sugar to stiffen it a bit, roll the exposed edge in crushed peanuts?

[HungryC]

Dulce de leche....marshmallow creme.....salted peanut ganache.....or a ginger buttercream, for something really different.

[Jaymes]

Or, over in the "tuna" (prickly pear) thread, there are ideas for making a variety of tasty sweet treats. Assuming you're somewhere with a Mexican/Latin produce section, you could pick up some of those to mix in with one of your fillings. They'd not only taste and look great, they're certainly different enough to invite interesting conversation.

[quiet1]

I made super tasty chocolate cookies once using cherry butter and a chocolate ganache for the filling. They were thumbprint style cookies rather than sandwich, but I don't see why it wouldn't work with a sandwich cookie as long as you got the filling textures right. I would layer them, though, rather than mixing the cherry butter into the ganache - part of the enjoyment of the cookies I made was that I layered the two (cherry under the ganache) and as a result you got some mixing of the cherry flavor into everything, but you'd also get more of a taste of the pure cherry butter, which was very bright and fruity against the rich chocolate. I find sometimes when fruit flavors are just mixed in to the chocolate the end result is kind of muddy tasting.

I've also used a milk chocolate caramel frosting recipe that would probably be pretty good with chocolate cookies, if you're willing to go chocolate-and-more-chocolate with the flavors. (I've misplaced the recipe, but it was essentially a milk chocolate whipped ganache only before melting the chocolate into the cream, you caramelized some sugar and then combined that with the cream. To prevent it from being over the top sweet I usually tried to use a less sweet milk chocolate or had some spare dark chocolate on hand to mix in if the taste seemed to need a little more of a chocolate hit once the milk chocolate and caramel cream were combined.)

[Panaderia Canadiense]

Spiced nectarine buttercream, seville marmelade reduction with a hint of dark chocolate ganache, mocha Royal icing, peanut gianduja, and cinnamon Royal are all very popular flavours here with my chocolate cookies....

[SylviaLovegren]

Apricot jam, raspberry jam, cherry jam, bitter orange,fig jam. Mint cream, hazelnut cream, hazelnut chocolate cream, orange cream, raspberry cream, vanilla cream, coffee cream, mocha cream, marshmallow, almond cream.... Yum!

[MelissaH]

My favorite fillings are the easy ones: jam or fruit butter (bonus points for homemade, but store-bought also works) or Nutella.

[rajoress]

Thanks all for your great and inspirational replies! I ran out of time (and energy after having to clean and cook also) so I made it easy on myself. I did whipped white chocolate ganache with a little raspberry puree added in (used for the first fruit course!) and whipped milk chocolate ganache with roasted ground coffee beans folded in. I was afraid the coffee beans would give a bitter crunch but because they were inside milk chocolate and between two chocolate cookies, the taste was amazing - no bitterness.

Thanks again!

Ruth

[CleanMe]

Thanks all for your great and inspirational replies! I ran out of time (and energy after having to cleaning carpets and cook also) so I made it easy on myself. I did whipped white chocolate ganache with a little raspberry puree added in (used for the first fruit course!) and whipped milk chocolate ganache with roasted ground coffee beans folded in. I was afraid the coffee beans would give a bitter crunch but because they were inside milk chocolate and between two chocolate cookies, the taste was amazing - no bitterness.

Thanks again!

Ruth

White chocolate and raspberry is just one of those timeless combinations that just work. I must admit that the coffee beans are intriguing, i think I'll give that one a try on the weekend and let you know how it turns out