Stuffed Maple Sandwich Cookies

The weather is cooling down and the time for baking is here! One of my favourite fall flavours is maple. As a result, one of the only store-bought cookies I like to eat are Dare Maple Leaf Creme Cookies. Two cookies stuffed with a maple creamy filling? I will take these over Oreos any day!

I wanted to see if it was possible for me to make a version myself without having to go to the store to enjoy these flavours. I was inspired by this recipe but did end up changing it quite a bit. I made half a batch but will write it in full for you.

Cream together 1 cup room temperature unsalted butter with 1 cup sugar and 1/2 cup brown sugar. Beat in 1 large egg.

Beat in 2 tsp of maple extract until well combined.

Sift together 2 1/2 cup flour, 2 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt. Add slowly and in several additions until just blended. Divide dough in half, roll into balls, flatten into disks, wrap in plastic and chill 1 hour.

Roll out disk of dough on a floured surface. The original recipe says to roll it out 1/3″ thick but that seemed too thick to me. I rolled mine out to 1/8″ at the most instead, cut with a maple leaf cookie cutter and put on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Put cookies in a preheated 375F oven for just 5 minutes and watch them! Some of mine scorched. When the cookies are this thin they can easily burn but luckily most of mine were perfect.

Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely.

While the cookies were cooling I worked on the filling. I thought the original filling was going to be too thin so I played around a little.

I added 2 tbsp of room temperature butter and 4 tbsp of cream cheese in an attempt to make a thicker filling. I creamed them together, added 1 cup of sifted icing sugar and 2 tbsp maple syrup.

The maple flavour was just not strong enough for me so I added some maple extract. Then it got too thin! It took a while for me figure out how to thicken the creamy filling to get it to the consistency I wanted it. The key was just keep adding more icing sugar, gradually.

That was the texture I wanted! I wanted a thin cookie with a substantial really maple-flavoured filling and I got it! I slathered it between the backs of two cooled cookies and put on the kettle.

These were not exactly like the Dare cookies but in the end, they were pretty darn close! Absolutely wonderful flavour, fun to make (well, once I figured out how to make the filling) and more than delicious to eat with a cup of tea.

If you have the patience and love maple as much as I do, you will love these!