I decided after looking through hundreds of Martha Stewart's fall recipes that I needed to attempt atleast one of them. I finally settled on these Dulce de Leche Bat Cookies. I hunted down the dulce de leche (advice: its WAY cheaper at a Hispanic grocery store than say, Safeway). The only thing I ran into is that it asks you to have an aspic cutter set to make the wings, I personally don't know what that is and wasn't going to buy one just to make these cookies, so I used a regular pumpkin cookie cutter instead. These are chocolate sandwich cookies, which you fill with dulce de leche (which is like soft caramel spread). They sweet but delicious! Nick LOVES caramel so these were right up his alley.It took a couple tries to get the dough to roll out. I actually doubled the recipes because I thought I would want more than 18 cookies, but with the difficulty I had with the dough I still ended up with 18 cookies. I found that rolling the dough out on floured parchment paper (because without the flour they will still stick to the paper), was the best way. I did cut some and then roll the rest of the dough back into a ball and rolled it out again to get a few more cookies, but those cookies, once baked, had a different finish on the top, almost crackly. I just made those the bottom of the sandwich cookie since you wouldn't see it anyways. The recipe I am giving you is the original, not doubled. Mine aren't even close to what Martha's looked like, but in the end they are yummy and they don't last long in this house! :)
Dulce de Leche Bat Cookies
3/4 c. all purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1/4 c. unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa
3/4 t. coarse salt
1/4 t. baking powder
2 T. unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 c granulated sugar
1/4 c. packed light brown sugar
1 large egg, plus one yolk
4 oz. semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled
1/2 t. pure vanilla extract
1/4 c. plus 2 T. dulce de leche
Whisk together flour, cocoa, salt, and baking powder.
Beat butter and sugars with a mixer on medium speed until pale and fluffy. Beat in egg, yolk, chocolate, flour mixture, and beat until just combined. Shape into a disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate 1 hour.
On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/8 inch thick. Cut out the 36 rounds with a 2 inch cutter, and space 1 inch apart on parchment lined baking sheets.
Using and aspic cutter set, cut out a triangle, point side up, and in the center of the half of the cookies, and then use the half moon cutter to make one wing on each side of the triangle. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 375* F. Bake until set, 7-9 minutes. Let cool. Top each uncut cookie with 1 t. dulce de leche and top with a cut out cookie.
