Our Italian sandwich butter cookies recipe lets you skip the bakery run.
As someone with a major sweet tooth, I have a handful of bakeries that I love to frequent. There’s the classic French one with the flaky croissants and the neighborhood one with Oreo-crusted donuts. One of my favorites, though, is the Italian bakery not too far from the Taste of Home offices. There, I love grabbing a handful of assorted cookies. The best one? The buttery sandwich cookie filled with jam and dipped in chocolate. It checks all the cookie boxes for me: crisp, fruity and chocolatey.
Since I can’t be making bakery runs all the time, I decided I had to find an Italian sandwich butter cookie recipe that I could make at home.
2 large eggs (this is one more than the recipe calls for, but it will make the dough better for piping)
1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup seedless raspberry or strawberry jam
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips, melted
Sprinkles
Directions
Step 1: Creating the Cookie Dough
Mixing up the cookie dough for these Italian sandwich butter cookies is easy. Cream together your softened butter and sugar. Then add two eggs and the extract and beat until nice and fluffy. Then stir in your dry ingredients until the dough just comes together.
Pro tip: For this recipe, I opted for almond extract instead of vanilla. Almond is a classic flavor in Italian-American bakeries, so it seemed like a smart substitution. If you’re partial to vanilla or even orange, those both work well, too.
Step 2: Shaping the Sandwich Butter Cookies
Lisa Kaminski/Taste of Home
While you can shape the dough using a cookie press, I’ve found that the tool can be tricky to master. Instead, opt for a pastry bag with a star tip. Any large tip works great here as long as the opening is about half inch or larger. Piping the dough helps get that classic Italian bakery shape. You’ll need a bit of muscle to get the first few out of the bag, but it’s well worth it.
For uniformly sized cookies, take a ruler and draw lines (mine were two inches) on a sheet of parchment paper. Flip the parchment over so the pen or marker won’t come into contact with the dough. These lines will ensure that all your cookies are the same length and will be an even match for the sandwiches. Use kitchen shears or a butter knife to cut the cookies as you pipe. This will ensure clean edges on your cookies.
Once they’re all piped, pop the cookies into the freezer for about an hour. This helps the cookies retain their ridges. After chilling, bake them in a 375ºF oven for 12 to 15 minutes or until the edges are golden. Remove from the oven and cool completely on a wire rack.
Step 3: Filling the Cookies and Finishing Them Off
Lisa Kaminski/Taste of Home
When your cookies are cool, break out your favorite raspberry or strawberry jam—these are our Test Kitchen’s preferred brands. Give it a good stir just to loosen it up a bit, then spread a layer across the bottom of one cookie and top with a second.
Dip half of the cookie sandwich into melted chocolate and place on waxed paper. If you’ve got one of these nifty melting pots, now’s the time to break it out. It’ll keep the chocolate at that just right dipping consistency.
Lisa Kaminski/Taste of Home
Be sure to give them a good sprinkling with the decorations of your choice before the chocolate is set. I like these rainbow nonpareils but you can use any kind of sprinkle you like. Try chopped nuts or shredded coconut, too.
The finished cookie is a fantastic combination of crisp, buttery cookie, fruit flavor and chocolate. With the hint of crunch from the sprinkles, these cookies are definitely deserving of any cookie tray.
Lisa Kaminski/Taste of Home
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Lisa is an editor at Taste of Home where she gets to embrace her passion for baking. She pours this love of all things sweet (and sometimes savory) into Bakeable, Taste of Home's baking club. Lisa is also dedicated to finding and testing the best ingredients, kitchen gear and home products for our Test Kitchen-Preferred program. At home, you'll find her working on embroidery and other crafts.
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Updated: Apr. 21, 2022
