Black Cocoa Sugar Cookie Sandwiches with Cream Cheese Buttercream

Black Cocoa Sugar Cookie Sandwiches with Cream Cheese Buttercream are the perfect 'grown-up oreo' treat! Soft, chewy black cocoa sugar cookies are paired with a smooth cream cheese frosting to make the perfect sugar cookie sandwich.

Hi hi! I’m sorry that I’ve been hiding a little bit. Anxiety, jet lag and homesickness isn’t a great combination if you’re looking for a good time, it turns out! I always find coming back to NYC a little hard, but for some reason this time was extra tricky. I am so, so grateful to have something that makes coming back so hard. It’s been 6 years and I swear it gets harder each time, and I forget about how hard it is and expect to be able to throw myself full noise back into work, and get bummed out with myself each time when I remember I need to just take it easy on myself for a wee bit and say a big old NOPE to adulting for a few days, and sure enough, I popped out the other side and I am ready to party again (by partying I mean staying home and working with my cat)!

Thankfully past me must have been able to predict this wee slump, because I have a couple of things that I shot before we left tucked away to share with you! These Black cocoa sugar cookie sandwiches with cream cheese frosting are a wee riff on a few recipes that I have shared before. This sugar cookie recipe originally came from Sarah Kieffer’s amazing book, and I have tweaked it a couple of times over the years for a few different things. It’s a basic chocolate sugar cookie, which I gave the black cocoa treatment, which gives off some serious Oreo vibes. The cookies alone are super good, and are the perfect texture - soft but also a little chewy, and they bake up perfectly flat, with a coating of sugar on the outside, which makes them ideal for sandwiching with things, in this case a cream cheese frosting. Black cocoa pairs perfectly with the cream cheese in this case - the cocoa is a little bitter and the frosting is sweet and a little bit tangy. These are kind of like a grown up oreo - and they are very, very good. I hope that you give them a try! x

A few wee tips:

• The cookies alone are great. You should make them and eat them.
• The secret, I have found, to cream cheese icing that doesn’t go everywhere, is cold cream cheese. You want room temperature butter, and cold cream cheese. Don’t be scared to whip the heck out of it once you add the powdered sugar to get rid of any lumps.
• I sandwiched these together with little blobs of frosting which I piped with a french star tip, which meant that there wasn’t toooo much frosting. You could use a round tip or pipe a circle of frosting too - just make it nice and thin so that you don’t get too much sweetness from the frosting.
• These do soften up quite a bit once you make them so if you are preparing them ahead, I would make the cookies and frosting separately and store them, then assemble these the day you are serving. Just give the frosting a quick wee re-whip. I have two mixing bowls for this reason - I often will store something in the bowl with some plastic wrap pressed against the surface, so if it needs to be re-whipped I can just stick the whole thing back onto the mixer and whip it back up!
• If you can’t find black cocoa, dutch cocoa will work great too! Black cocoa and dutch cocoa have been through a similar alkalising process, black cocoa has just been taken one step further and alkalised even more to make it extra dark. It’s worth tracking down if you can, but if not, dutch cocoa works perfectly here too!

Made this recipe and love it?

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A note on salt and oven temperature

It is important to note the type of salt that is called for in a recipe. I use Diamond Crystal salt throughout my recipes - if you use a different sort of kosher salt or regular table salt you will need to adjust accordingly as some salt is 'saltier' than others. Morton's salt is twice as salty, so you will need half the quantity. Same goes for a regular table salt. I am working to get gram measurements throughout my recipes for salt but still getting there.

All oven temperatures are conventional unless otherwise stated. If you are baking on fan / convection, you will need to adjust the temperature. An oven thermometer is a great investment to ensure that your oven is the correct temperature.

Using the double / triple function in the recipe card

You will notice that there is a '1X' '2X' '3X' button in my recipe card. This can be used for doubling or tripling a recipe. However, please note that this only doubles the ingredient quantities in the ingredients list and NOT in the method. If there are quantities or pan sizes in the method of the recipe (for example weigh out 150g brown butter), you will need to scale this number manually. It will also not change the baking time in the recipe so you will need to adjust this yourself too. It is always a good idea to read through a recipe fully before doubling it just to check this. If you would like to scale this recipe or convert for another pan size, use my calculator!

Tools and equipment

For a list of my go-to tools and equipment, I have a post you can refer to here.

Why is this recipe in grams?

I post my recipes in grams as it is the most accurate way to bake. Cups are not only inaccurate but they vary in volume worldwide. There is no way for me to provide one cup measure that works for everyone. However, posting in weight fixes this issue. If you would like the recipe in cups you are welcome to convert it yourself via google, but please do not ask me to do it for you as I am not comfortable providing a recipe using a method that I have not tested. Baking with a scale is easy, accurate, and also makes cleanup super simple. Here is the scale that I use if you would like a recommendation! Here's to accurate baking!

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