How-To: Cookie Sandwiches

This year was the first year my daughter had to bring Valentines to school for Valentine's Day, so we wanted to go all out. (Ok, I wanted to go all out. She just wanted cookies.) Here's how we did it!

First you need:

Rolled sugar cookies

 Make sure you use ROLLED sugar cookies, with a ROLLED COOKIE recipe. If the recipe has the word "dropped" in it, or has "spoon onto a baking sheet" in the directions, then they're NOT rolled cookies. Only rolled sugar cookies will keep their shape and not spread while baking. If you're doing this around Christmas time, you can use gingerbread instead. Here's the recipe I use for sugar cookies --> Rolled Sugar Cookies

Colored nonpareils

 I suppose you could use jimmies, but I feel these stick better. I used red, white, and pink for the holiday. Add a little less than half of the container to a bowl for easy application.

Buttercream

I use 1/2 C of butter and 1/2 C of shortening creamed with a splash of vanilla, then I add 2 lbs. (more or less depending on taste/texture preference) of powdered sugar one cup at a time, and then I add approximately 2 tablespoons of cream and mixed it for another ten minutes or so. You can use any other kind of flavor you want, just cut the vanilla in half and add a different flavor to make up for the loss. You can also color the buttercream by adding gel food color. If you want chocolate buttercream, replace approximately half a cup of powdered sugar with cocoa powder. Add the buttercream to a piping bag and cut the tip off for a pretty big opening. I used a large round piping tip, but it's really not necessary.

Now just lay out some cookies by twos:

And pipe some buttercream about 1/4 of an inch thick onto half of the cookies:

Squish the bare cookies onto the buttercreamed cookies, making sure to have some buttercream protruding out so the sprinkles can stick. Now just roll the sides in the sprinkles and repeat with all of your cookies.

Now feast!