The smell of fresh baked cookies always brings a sense of home to your living space. This week’s Vanilla Oatmeal Cookie Sandwiches recipe comes from Carly Hamilton of Creme Cream Puffs using Tribal Vanilla’s Pure Vanilla Extract. Tribal Vanilla creates high quality, ethically produced vanilla products from Uganda and Mexico and ensures that the vanilla farmers are compensated fairly for the work they are doing. You can learn more about their mission here.
Vanilla Oatmeal Cookie
Ingredients
– 1 cup white sugar
– 1 cup brown sugar
– 1 cup butter
– 2 eggs
– 2 tsp Tribal Vanilla Extract
– 2 cups flour
– 2.5 cups ground oatmeal (I grind my oatmeal using a Vitamix but a food processor works as well)
– 1/2 tsp salt
– 1 tsp baking powder
– 1 tsp baking soda
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 375° F.
2. Using a hand mixer or a Kitchen Aid Mixer, cream butter with both sugars on medium speed till the mixture lightens. Once smooth, add eggs and vanilla and continue mixing until fully combined.
3. In a separate bowl combine flour, ground oatmeal, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
4. Once combined, reduce mixture speed to low and slowly add wet ingredients and mix till combined.
5. Once combined, stir in white chocolate chips, cornflakes and marshmallows using a wooden spoon.
6. Now that your dough is ready to go, use a cookie scoop to scoop the dough onto a parchment lined cookie sheet (you can also form dough into golf ball–sized balls with your hands). Once the balls are equally spread out, flatten into 1/4 inch disks and place on the middle oven rack to bake for 6-8 minutes (or until edges are golden brown and the centre soft). Let cool on baking sheet then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Vanilla Bean Buttercream
Ingredients
– 2 cups icing sugar
– 1/3 cup softened butter
– 4 tbs milk
– ½ Tribal Vanilla Pod scraped
Directions
1. Using a hand mixer or a Kitchen Aid Mixer, whisk butter, icing sugar, milk and vanilla until fluffy and smooth.
2. Transfer buttercream into a piping bag with a star nozzle (if you don’t have a nozzle just be sure to cleanly cut the tip). Set aside.
Salted Caramel
Ingredients
– 2 ¼ cups sugar
– 1 cup water
– 1 tsp salt
– 2 tsp vanilla Tribal Vanilla Extract
– 2 cups heavy cream
Directions
1. In a clean large saucepan, combine water and sugar. Place over medium heat until all the sugar has dissolved. Using a wet pastry brush, clean the sides of the saucepan ensuring there are no sugar crystals above the waterline – otherwise this can cause the caramel to crystalize. Once the sugar has dissolved in the water, turn the heat up to high and cook the sugar syrup until a medium amber color is achieved.
2. Combine the cream, vanilla and salt in a glass measuring cup (or a bowl with an easy pour spout).
3. Once the sugar mixture has turned a medium amber color, carefully add the cream mixture in 3-4 inclusions (mixing between inclusions). Note* Go slow here as the sugar mixture will boil up every time you add some cream.
4. Once all the cream has been added, lower the heat. Using a candy thermometer, cook the mixture to 225∞ F – then remove from heat and transfer to a heat proof container. Set aside to cool.
Final Assembly!
On the cookie sheet, flip cookies over so they are bottom up. Making two rows, place equal size cookies beside one another. Using the piping bag of Vanilla bean buttercream, carefully pipe a ring of buttercream onto every second cookie. Once every second cookie has a ring of butter cream, take salted caramel and carefully spoon approximately 1 tsp of caramel into the middle of each ring (note* you may need to rewarm the caramel if it has cooled down completely- you can do this carefully in 30 second intervals in the microwave or in a pot on the stovetop). Carefully sandwich cookies together. Drizzle the sandwiched cookies with the extra caramel sauce and flaky sea salt.
Note* if you have any Caramel Sauce left over, it makes for a great ice cream topping or cake filling.
