Ingredients
- Dough
- 1 cup (8 ounces, 2 sticks) unsalted butter, warmed to room temperature but not melted
- 1 cup (4 ounces) glazing or confectioners' sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 cup (1 7/8 ounces) pecan meal (or other nut flour)
- 2 1/2 cups (10 3/4 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
- 1/4 cup (1 3/4 ounces) sugar (for sprinkling over the dough)
- Filling
- 2 each (2 1/2 to 3 ounces) Hershey's Skor® bars or Heath® English Toffee bars
- 1/2 cup (4 ounces) evaporated milk (heavy cream is also an option)
- 1 cup (6 ounces) bittersweet chocolate, chopped
Preparation
Step 1
Dough: In a medium-sized mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until light. Add the egg, salt, baking powder and pecan meal. Mix together until well-blended, then add the flour and stir until combined. The mixture is a bit heavy, so use slow speed if you're using a mixer, so as not to challenge the mixer too much.
Divide the dough in half, and form each half into a disk. Wrap each disk separately, and refrigerate for 1 hour, or longer.
Shaping: Remove one disk from the refrigerator, and lightly flour both sides. Roll it out on a lightly floured work surface to about 1/8-inch thick. The thinner the dough, the crisper the cookies will be. Note: The dough tends to split if it's very cold while you're rolling it out -- just press it together with your fingers.
Cut the cookies with a 1 1/2- to 2-inch cookie cutter. Sprinkle each cookie with sugar, then place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Repeat this process with the other dough disk.
Baking: Bake the cookies in a preheated 375°F oven for 6 to 8 minutes; don't let them brown. Transfer the cookies from the pan to a wire rack to cool.
Filling: First, freeze the toffee bars; this makes them easier to chop fine. If you have a small food processor or blender, process the candy bars till they're finely ground. If you're doing this by hand, crush the frozen candy bars with a rolling pin into fine pieces.
Heat the milk or cream until bubbles form around the edges. Place the toffee and chocolate pieces in a medium-sized mixing bowl, and pour the hot milk or cream over them, stirring till smooth; if you've crushed the toffee by hand, there'll probably be a few small chunks remaining in the filling; that's OK. Set the mixture aside to cool to room temperature.
When the filling has cooled but is not yet fully set, sandwich the cookies together using 1 generous teaspoon of filling in each; if you're making open-face cookies, use half a teaspoon of filling on each, and pipe it through a star tube. Allow the filling to harden for several hours before placing the cookies in airtight containers. Yield: 35 sandwich cookies, or 70 open-faced cookies.