These Pumpkin Ganache Sandwich Cookies are a lightly spiced dough with cutout faces through which peeks hints of yummy chocolate ganache. It’s a very flavorful cookie with the spices and the chocolate. For Christmas, just use a different cutter and omit the orange.
Ingredients
- For the cookies
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1-3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon pumpkin spice extract (optional, but highly recommended; it will kick up the flavor without darkening the color of the dough, see note*)
2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
orange food coloring
jack-o-lantern cookie cutter with cutout face (see note**)
- For the ganache filling
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips or chopped chocolate bar
1/2 cup heavy cream
Directions
- Make the cookies
- In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar until creamy. Beat in eggs, vanilla and pumpkin spice extract (if using). In another bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, salt pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon. Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture until combined. If dough seems too sticky, you can add 1/4 to 1/2 cup more flour, but use as little as possible for the tenderest cookies. Stir in a few drops of orange food coloring until you’ve achieved the proper orange.
- Preheat oven to 400F and line baking sheets with parchment paper. On a board lightly “floured” with powdered sugar, or between two sheets of waxed paper, roll out dough to a scant 1/4-inch thickness. Use Jack-o-lantern cookie cutters to cut tops and bottoms of cookies…the tops will have the eyes, nose and mouth cut out, the bottoms will remain solid. Make sure you have an equal number of tops and bottoms. When cookies are placed on the baking sheet, freeze the baking sheet for about 10 minutes in the freezer. This will help cookies keep their shape. Bake for about 6 minutes or until slightly puffy and no longer shiny. Remove before edges brown. Transfer to wire racks to cool.
- Make the ganache and assemble cookies
- Place the chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl. In a saucepan, heat cream until boiling. Pour hot cream over chocolate and stir until smooth. Allow to cool and thicken before using. You want to use the ganache while it is still liquid but not so runny it will run off the cookie. Spread ganache on bottom cookies and top with face cookies. If ganache starts to harden, put it in the microwave for just a few seconds at a time, stirring immediately upon removal, until desired consistency.
Notes
- * Pumpkin Spice extract is made by several different brands. In the fall in the US you may be able to find McCormick’s brand in your grocery store. Watkins and Amoretti and Lorann also make this. Most of these plus a few others can easily be found on Amazon. Different extracts have different strengths and concentrations so go easy on them!
- ** For the full effect of the jack-o-lantern face, you need a cookie cutter that cuts out the eyes, nose, and mouth. I really like this one that you can get in different sizes and allows you to make the top and bottom cookie. There is also this one that has different components for cutting out the face as well as this one that has mix-and-match components to make a variety of faces. The important thing is that whatever cutter you get, make sure that it really CUTS OUT the face, not just leave an impression in the dough.
For Christmas cookie sandwiches, how about this cute snowflake with cutouts!
Of course, the yield of the recipe depends entirely on how large your cookie cutters are!