Treats for a Book Club

I cannot stop cooking right now.  Whenever we get back from vacation I tend to throw myself with extreme passion into the kitchen.  This week has been no exception.  I've made lentil soup, tofu curry, sopes (twice!), and now homemade Oreos for my Feminist book club tonight.  I also made a delicious, healthy roasted red pepper spread to take tonight and then I remembered this cookie that a friend of mine had brought to an art opening a couple weeks ago and I thought, why not?

The ingredient list is simple, the fanciest ingredient being instant coffee which you could omit in a pinch.  It is just a little time consuming to make the dough, roll it out, bake, cool, make the frosting, assemble, and then chill: about 2 hours active time including me running to the store to get more cocoa.  Doh!  And, oh yeah, the cleaning up took almost as long as the baking!  I had to scrub my cocoa and butter drenched counter several times and then finish it off with some fresh lemon to get it nice and clean again! 

I rolled my dough a little thinner than was suggested and for once in my life I actually made more cookies than the recipe said it would!  I made 29; the recipe says it makes 24.  

Since I made some extra cookies I made a tiny bit more filling.  The only thing I changed in the recipe was to add a tablespoon of half and half to the filling to make it a little bit creamier.  It worked out perfectly.  

I love the look of assembly line baking.  

Ah, these are delicious and lovely looking as well.  Who needs 8 zillion ingredient store bought processed cookies?  I will be making these for special occasions from now on.  

You can find the recipe for Fauxreos adapted from a Stella Parks recipe on the New York Times website. 

P.S. My feminist book club read the Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime and it is all short stories of female detectives written in the late 19th century and they are really fun to read.  The stereotypes about the abilities of women are fascinating.