Salted peanut caramel cookies
Buttery shortbread style cookies sandwiched with peanut butter buttercream icing, caramel and crunchy salted peanuts
Ingredients
For the cookies
- 50 g salted peanuts plus extra for decoration
- 225 g plain flour sifted
- 150 g icing sugar sifted
- 150 g unsalted butter diced and chilled
- 2 large egg yolks Clarence Court sell these in cartons
For the filling
- 50 g unsalted butter softened
- 75 g crunchy peanut butter
- 75 g icing sugar sifted
- 1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste
- 100 g dulce de leche or caramel
- Pinch flaky sea salt
Instructions
For the cookies
- Place your peanuts in the bowl of a food processor or a nutribullet and pulse until finely ground. If you don’t have a food processor, you can also place your peanut in a sealable food bag and bash with a rolling pin until they resemble ground almonds.
- Sift your flour and icing sugar into a bowl and add the ground peanuts. Mix to combine.
- Add the diced butter and using your hands, rub between your fingers until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. You want to make sure you’ve broken down all the butter, and everything is nicely combined, but not yet a dough.
- Add the egg yolks and stir in gently. It might seem as though there isn’t enough liquid. At this point, use your hands to knead the dough ver lightly and gently until it starts to come together in clumps.
- Turn it out onto your work surface and using your hands again, keep working until it forms one uniform ball of dough.N.B. Overworking or kneading the dough too much will result in tough cookies. You want to handle it as little as possible!
- Divide the dough into two halves, press them into discs and then wrap in clingfilm. Refrigerate for at least an hour or until the dough is firm.
- Roll each piece of dough out separately between two pieces of parchment until roughly 5mm thick. As the dough is high in butter, it may be flexible and soft, so place it onto a baking tray and refrigerate once more until firm.
- Preheat your oven to 180C/160C fan. Remove one of the dough sheets from the fridge and carefully peel off the top piece of parchment, using this to line a baking tray. Using a 5cm round cookie cutter, cut out as many cookies as you can, placing them onto the prepared baking tray. You can bake them fairly close together, as they won’t spread much in the oven.
- Repeat with the second sheet of dough and then collect the scraps together to form another uniform ball of leftover dough. Repeat by rolling between two sheets of baking parchment and refrigerating once more so it’s easier to handle.
- Bake the cookies in the preheated oven for about 12 minutes, rotating the trays halfway through baking, until the cookies are lightly browned around the edges.
- Remove from the oven and leave to cool before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
For the filling
- Using an electric mixer, beat together the butter and peanut butter until smooth and creamy. Sift in the icing sugar and beat on high speed until light and fluffy. Add in the vanilla and beat to combine.
To assemble your cookies
- Once your cookies have baked and cooled completely, pipe or spread half of your cookies with the buttercream. Top with a scant teaspoon of caramel and sprinkle over a few extra chopped peanuts and some flay sea salt. Then sandwich them all together.
Notes
These should keep for a fair few days in a Tupperware box, but are best eaten within 1-2 days.