Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cookie Sandwiches

I made these for Sophie and her family. The cookies are the chocolate cream cheese snacking cookies from Baked's latest cookbook. I've made them before and had wonderful feed back. The main thing about these cookies is that people who say they don't like sweets or really chocolatey things like them and people (like me) who would live on chocolate if they could like them. I figured that'd be good since Sophie's parents aren't as into sweets but her sister is and Sophie herself falls somewhere in between.



Sophie's sister, Hanna, had just returned from her honeymoon in Africa and kindly allowed me to crash her family dinner welcoming her and her husband home. Even more kindly, she and Reece (her husband) brought me vanilla beans from Zanzibar! I haven't used them yet--I'm saving them for recipes worthy of their deliciousness--but I'm very excited that I now have a jar in my kitchen with a fist full of real vanilla beans!

So I was very glad I hadn't just made cookies. Even very popular cookies. I made cookies and left some plain to be eaten alone or with ice cream but I also used some of the cookies to make quasi-whoopie pies. Remember the cake I made for Sophie (with the peanut butter buttercream)? I whipped some cream cheese into the left over peanut butter buttercream to make a lighter frosting with a very subtle cream cheese tang to complement the very subtle cream cheese flavor in the cookies.

As I mentioned we had ice cream. Well at Sophie's house, ice cream has toppings! So I pilfered some chocolate cookie crumbs and mini M&Ms and rolled the cookie sandwiches in them so that they stuck to the frosting filling. They definitely didn't need the toppings, but gosh they were fun and the M&Ms were a whole new level of excellent!

The cookies were a hit with everyone and the sandwiches were quite popular as well--in fact I think everyone but Sophie's dad, who doesn't like peanut butter (it's a European thing, my pops feels the same way!) liked the sandwiches. In any case I know Sophie loved her M&M one!