Chocolate Alfajores
By: Marcella
Published: Thursday, September 9, 2010 - 7:10pm

Ingredients




1 cup cornstarch
1 1/3 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon stick and 3 unsalted butter (room temperature)
3 egg yolks (room temperature)
5 tablespoons semi-sweet chocolate morsels- melted (70 g)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cans dulce de leche
diced walnuts

Preparation

1 In a bowl, sift the cornstarch, the flour and the sugar. Make a hole in the dry ingredient mixture and add the egg yolks, the butter (cut in small pieces), and the vanilla. I mix those ingredients first and once the egg yolks are incorporated, then I add the chocolate. To melt the chocolate, I melt only about 2/3 of it using a double boiler, stirring gently but steadily as the chocolate melts. Once it's melted, I take it off the heat, add the remaining chocolate and stir. The warm chocolate will melt the newly added chocolate, and doing it this way will help bringing down the temperature of the warm chocolate. You want to bring down the chocolate temperature close to room tempera 2 Roll the dough about 1/8 of an inch thick and use a 2-inch cookie cutter to make the cookies. I spread very little flour to roll the dough, as it can stick a little bit to the rolling pin and/or surface. But it won't stick much and if you sprinkle too much flour, the cookies will get some white stains. Preheat oven to 350F, place cookies on cookie sheet (no need to grease it) and bake it for 8-10 minutes (with each batch, the baking time will be slightly reduced because of the increased humidity in the oven from the cookies). I keep a very close eye on the cookies towards the end and take them out of the oven just as they're beginning to look done because the residual heat from the cookie sheet will continue to bake the cookies. Don't even let them g 3 Once the cookies are cooled, spread dulce de leche on the flat side of the cookie and place another cookie on top making a sandwich (again, flat side to the dulce de leche), squeeze them lightly together then I even out the dulce de leche around it with a knife and roll it on the diced walnuts.