A colleague brought these dinky little yoyo sandwich cookies into work the other day. They came in a tub and were literally the size of a large grape, all golden yellow and filled with their custard buttercream. I’ll be making my version of them soon, but they got me to thinking, a mocha version would be super fantastic.
These. Only brown.
Because yoyos are made with custard powder, I thought it might be better to go with their cousin, the Melting Moment, to adapt to a mocha cookie.
Turns out though that there is more than one difference to these buttery shortbreaddy cookie cousins – the melting moment has no custard powder, but has a little bit of baking powder. The yoyo has custard powder but no baking powder. And if you want dense dinky buttery cookies, you need to lose the baking powder, even if only a little went in.
The upshot of all this is that my mocha cookies started this size….
small.
… but they grew.
not so small.
Don’t get me wrong, you can still stick a whole one in your mouth relatively delicately, but I still need to make a recipe where they are teeny.
On the upside, these mocha melting moments are so inconceivably light, the ground coffee really crunches in your mouth, and the smooth darkest chocolate buttercream floods your mouth with happiness.
My colleagues have been super excited about them all day, the batch of 40 cookies have more than half gone, so the math suggests everyone has had two each.
This is a good enough reason to share the recipe. I’ll do dinky yoyos and their brothers and sisters another time. Like probably on the weekend, because I am now a little obsessed with teeny tiny sandwich cookies.
Mocha Melting Moments
makes about 40 sandwich cookies
Mocha Cookies
ingredients
200g unsalted butter
1 cup cornflour
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup icing sugar
2 tbsp cocoa
2 tbsp ground coffee beans
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
mixing
Place all of the ingredients in a large bowl and beat on low speed until a soft dough forms. Taking scant teaspoons of the mixture, roll into about 80 little balls, just larger than a marble. Place on a baking sheet about 3.5cm apart, and press down lightly with a fork. Bake for 20 minutes at 175 degrees Celsius. Cool on a wire rack. Sandwich the cold cookies together with the dark chocolate buttercream – it’s easiest to do this using a disposable piping bag, allowing about 5 grams of buttercream per sandwich.
Dark Chocolate Buttercream
ingredients
100g unsalted butter
30g 90% cocoa chocolate (I used Lindt), melted
100g icing sugar
2 tbsp cocoa
1/4 tsp salt
mixing
Beat the butter until creamy, mix in the melted chocolate. Add the sifted icing sugar, cocoa and salt, and blend until smooth.
Enjoy!xxx
