Food Friday! : Zucchini Nut Bread Cookie Sandwiches

Zucchini Nut Bread Cookie Sandwiches

It's a bread! It's a cookie! No, it's a sandwich!...

Last Sunday, I attended a potluck lunch and I had signed up to bring a dessert (enough for 12 people). Of all the dessert recipes I had, I decided to search for a new recipe to try and I came across this recipe on Martha Stewart's website, featuring recipes that included end-of-summer produce. These cookies, as indicated by "bread" in the name, are much more spongy and chewy than your normal cookie, and I might go so far as to say that they are almost like a muffin top. The cream cheese filling gives this sandwich a very oatmeal cream-pie look (especially tempting for children...and adults!), although I think these cookies might be just as good sans filling. Even still, they were a big hit! One (half)word: delish!

 Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour (I used 1/2 cup all-purpose flour and 1/2 cup whole wheat flour)
1 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature (separated)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup finely grated zucchini
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted

Preparation

Sift flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a bowl. In a separate bowl, beat 1 stick of the butter and the sugars until pale and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Then, beat flour mixture into butter mixture. Mix in zucchini (mostly "de-watered"), oats, and walnuts. Refrigerate 1 hour before baking.

While waiting, make the icing: beat together remaining 1/2 stick butter, the cream cheese, and confectioners' sugar until smooth. Store covered in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Using a 1 1/2-inch ice cream scoop (about 2 tablespoons), drop dough onto parchment-lined baking sheets (or silpats), spacing about 2 inches apart. Bake until edges are golden, about 15-17 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack.

Once cookies are completely cool, spread/pipe roughly 1 heaping tablespoon of the filling onto the flat side of 1 cookie, and sandwich with another cookie.

One of the most helpful things my mother taught me in her kitchen was that a piping bag was not necessary. An easier, cheaper, less messy way of piping is to use a ziploc bag: spoon the filling/icing into a gallon-size ziploc bag, close the top after squeezing most of the air out, push contents down to one corner, and twist the top of the bag to keep contents in that corner. Then, when you are ready with a cookie (or whatever you are icing) in hand, cut the corner of the ziploc bag off and pipe away! Since I don't own (yet) a icing piping bag or tips, this is how I pipe everything I make.

I made these cookies the night before and stored them in the fridge until ready to serve. This recipe makes approximately 30 cookies, or 15 sandwiches. Enjoy!