I recently took a brief poll of friends to figure out what food or drinks came to mind when they heard the word “derby.” Turns out, not surprisingly, alcohol is on the forefront.

Cool. I can work with that.

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Enter the mint julep of cookies.

Mint chocolate sandwich cookies with bourbon-vanilla cream(!!).

The cream alone is worth being the star of the show, but eating spoonfuls of booze-laced filling is frowned upon or so I hear.

So look, I’ve never watched the Derby, and I don’t plan on starting any time soon, but ask me to draw inspiration from mint and bourbon (and horse races? is that what the Derby is all about?) any day and I’ll be hard pressed to say no.

See you at the finish line (with a large glass of milk, obvi).

Mint chocolate sandwich cookies with bourbon-vanilla cream

Author: ari | well seasoned
Yield: 2 dozen cookies 1x

Scale

Ingredients

For the cookie dough

¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, (softened)
1 cup sugar
1 extra large egg, (room temperature)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp peppermint extract
1 ½ cups plus 2 Tbsp pastry flour
½ cup unsweetened dutch cocoa powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp kosher salt

For the bourbon-vanilla cream filling

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, (room temperature)
4 oz cream cheese, (room temperature)
3 cups confectioner’s sugar, (sifted)
1 Tbsp bourbon
1 Tbsp vanilla

Instructions

For the cookie dough

In the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, beat together butter and sugar, about 3 minutes. Add egg, mint extract, and vanilla extract, then beat another minute.
Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Add to the wet ingredients and continue beating until the dough comes together and forms a ball. Flatten the dough into a large disk and wrap with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 350 F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silpat. Roll dough out between two layers of plastic wrap to roughly ¼” thick. Any thinner and the cookies will burn!
Using a biscuit cutter or a cookie stamp, cut out small, equal-sized rounds of dough and transfer to prepared baking sheets. Re-roll out the remaining dough, repeating the process, until you’ve used up all of the cookie dough.
Bake for 18-20 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes on baking sheet, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

For the bourbon-vanilla cream filling

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together butter and cream cheese until thoroughly combined. Reduce the speed to low then slowly add in sifted confectioner’s sugar. Slowly increase speed and beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the bourbon and vanilla, then mix to combine and set aside.
When cookies are cool, place about 2 Tbsp of filling on half of the cookies. Place another cookie on top, pressing down slightly to evenly distribute the filling. Repeat until all cookies are used. Serve with milk!