Easy Frosting Sandwich Cookies
These vanilla sandwich cookies are what I remember from childhood. Soft, buttery, light, delicate, and airy. They’re not cakey and not dry, which are problems that can plague many sugar cookies. The wafer cookies themselves are more buttery than sweet, and the overall sweetness comes from the buttercream. The melt-in-your-mouth quality is wonderful. The vanilla wafer cookies practically dissolve when you bite in, and then you hit the creamy, rich, and dense buttercream and it’s such a great contrast. The baked in sugar crystals also add a bit of texture and make you just want another one. It’s really a good thing I didn’t make a larger batch because I could go to sandwich-cookie town on these. They remind me of being 10 years old and my mom and grandma leaving me alone with a container of them and in literally a half hour, the container was gone. It’s just because pink food tastes better.
Ingredients for Vanilla Sandwich Cookies
To make the vanilla cookies with frosting in the middle, you’ll need the following ingredients:
Butter Granulated sugar Vanilla extract All-purpose flour Cream or half and half Confectioners’ sugar Food coloring
How to Make Vanilla Sandwich Cookies
I’ve gone into detail below on how to make these vanilla frosting sandwich cookies. The instructions look lengthy because I’ve included all of my top tips! You can scroll to the recipe card at the bottom of this post for the full ingredients list and instructions, if desired.
Step 1: Make the Cookie Dough
Interestingly, there’s no egg in the dough and it’s made by creaming one stick of butter with a small amount of sugar and vanilla before adding flour. After adding the flour, the dough will be very sandy, pebbly, and dry. Add half-and-half or cream one tablespoon at a time, and mix.
Step 2: Chill the Cookie Dough
Transfer the dough to an airtight container and park it in the fridge for at least two hours, or up to five days, before rolling it out.
Step 3: Roll & Cut the Cookie Dough
Turn the dough out onto a floured Silpat Non-Stick Baking Mat or floured countertop and cover it with a piece of plastic wrap and roll it out to about one-eighth inch thick. Use a 2-inch cookie cutter or biscuit cutter to make rounds. You may make them smaller, in the one-inch range using a shot glass as your cutter if you don’t have a one-inch cutter, but I frankly don’t have the patience for anything less than two inches. God Bless my mom and grandma; they did. Re-roll your scraps and use every last bit of dough until it’s gone because this is a small batch recipe, yielding only about 26 wafers, or 13 sandwich cookies.
Step 4: Chill the Dough … Again
Place the rounds on a Silpat-lined baking tray and I refrigerated it for an hour before baking because after all that rolling, the dough was on the soft side and I didn’t want them to spread. I fit all 26 on one tray and they didn’t spread much at all.
Step 5: Bake the Cookies
Before baking, dredge each dough round through granulated sugar. It adds an extra dimension of texture and flavor to the smooth wafers and it’s a must. After they’ve been sugared and are on the baking sheet, pierce each cookie with the tines of a fork three or four times, making tiny impressions that remind me of tiny button holes. Bake them at 350F for about 7 to 9 minutes. I baked for 8 and I urge you not to leave the kitchen and to watch them like a hawk, literally staring inside your oven starting at about 6 minutes. They are small, full of butter, sugar, white flour, and are highly prone to burning.
Step 6: Make the Buttercream
While the cookies cool, make the buttercream. Beat one stick of butter, add confectioners’ sugar, vanilla, and beat until you have soft and fluffy buttercream, about 5 minutes. Add food coloring slowly, in the color of your choice.
Step 7: Assemble the Vanilla Sandwich Cookies
Dollop a heaping teaspoon of frosting into the center of one cookie, top with a second cookie, rotating the second cookie and smooshing it down slightly so the frosting disperses. I don’t bother with a pastry bag but if you like to make work for yourself, be my guest.
Tips for Making Vanilla Sandwich Cookies
Sugar in the frosting: When making the frosting, feel free to play with the sugar ratio depending on how thick you like your buttercream. I find 2 cups sugar gives me a frosting that’s just right for a job like this when I want a firmer frosting. If you like looser frosting, 1 1/2 cups will probably do the trick. Adding the food coloring: Extracts and food colorings are two things you can’t un-do once they’re in, so go slowly when coloring the buttercream. I used about 10 drops of red and it caught me off guard how fast it turned rosy-red-pink rather than pale-pastel-pink. Leftover frosting? I used all but 1/4 cup of the frosting and prefer to frost the cookies liberally and thickly. Leftover frosting can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 1 month.
More Easy Sandwich Cookies:
Vanilla Melting Moments Cookies with Nutella Filling — These sandwich cookies are so soft and they literally melt in your mouth! Perfect for Christmas, Easter, and family gatherings! Tried this recipe? Leave a review! Consider leaving a 5 star rating if you’ve made and loved one of my recipes! Shortbread Sandwich Cookies – Chocolate filling is sandwiched between two buttery shortbread cookies before the cookies are dipped in sweet white chocolate and festively decorated! Double Chocolate Peppermint Cookies — Rich, decadent, soft and chewy double chocolate cookies are sandwiched together with a tangy cream cheese filling before being rolled in crushed candy canes and drizzled with white chocolate for extra flavor and holiday festiveness! Homemade Nutter Butter Cookies — Homemade copycat Nutter Butters are so much better than the store bought originals! Creamy peanut butter filling is sandwiched between lightly crunchy peanut butter cookies. Raspberry Linzer Cookies — Linzer cookies are the ultimate sandwich cookies! A layer of raspberry jam is tucked in between two buttery, nutty cookies and dusted with powdered sugar!
