Occhio Di Bue/Italian Sandwich Cookies

Have you ever tried Occhio di Bue? It's a yummy Italian sandwich dessert. You can make this wonderful treat with strawberry jam or Nutella. The options are limitless!

The ingredients that you will need:

COOKIE DOUGH:

1 3/4 cups of flour (240 grams)

1/2 cup of cold butter chopped- 1 stick of butter (110 grams)

1 egg

1 egg yolk

1/4 cup + 3 tablespoons granulated sugar (96 grams)

1 pinch of salt

FOR THE FILLING:

1/2 cup Nutella (more or less)

1/4 cup Jam of choice (more or less)

powdered sugar for dusting

MATERIALS:

2 piping bags

2 knifes to put the Nutella and jam into the piping bag

cooling rack

a bowl

egg strainer

Saran Wrap

First you will need to grab a bowl. (a medium sized bowl)

Get out your flour and get your measurements ready! Before you start on baking and mixing, make sure that your hands are clean and hair is put away when close to the workspace.

Make sure before we begin take your butter out of the fridge and sit it close to you so, it can unfreeze a bit.

• Measure out 1 3/4 cups of flour and pour it into the bowl.
• Along with the flour into the bowl, mix a pinch of salt with it. Then mix!

Once you have finished mixing the salt and the flour together. Grab a spoon and scoop the insides of the flour and salt and making a hole in the middle of the flour and salt.

Grab out 2 eggs and the egg strainer.

• Crack one egg in the middle of the well made out of flour and salt.
• Then grab the egg strainer, crack the second egg onto the strainer and wait for the albumen to be drained out.
• This step might take a bit long so if you would like grab a spoon; just grab the yolk from the egg strainer and place it into the well.

Once the albumen gets drained out, mix the flour with the egg and pulse it with a fork.

After pulsing the flour with the egg and the egg yolk, you would add your 1/4 cup and 3 tablespoons of granulated sugar. Mix with a fork, until the sugar is full mixed in.

After mixing in the sugar, grab your stick of butter and chop it up. You can use a knife but I used a frosting spatula to chop up the cold butter. Add it into the bowl, chopped up and you a hand mixer to mix in all the ingredients. (If the hand mixer isn't helping, you can use your hands but when done wash your hands because this dough can be very sticky and get everywhere)

Once all mixed in.. Wrap the dough in saran wrap or parchment paper (either is perfectly fine) and put the dough in the refrigerator for 1 hour!

Once the hour is finished.. Take the dough out of fridge, grab the flour and spread it across the area that you will be lacing the dough (so the dough won't stick to the workspace), take the saran wrap or parchment paper off the dough, place the dough onto the flour patted section and begin to knead the dough.

Begin this step after you have began to knead the dough. Grab your baking tray and spray the tray with vegetable oil.

Now in your workspace with your dough now, how I patted the dough down was that I used my palm of my hand and pressing it down towards the counter. I at first was using a glass to make the shape, but that technique wasn't working for me, so what I did was I grabbed a decent amount of dough rolled it into a ball, and patted it down on the baking tray.

Have a column with holes and the other column not have holes.

Once all the dough is shaped and have their holes, preheat the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius) and just wait now. Now this may sound different from other cookie recipes but you actually are gonna put your tray of cookies into the fridge for 15 minutes. Once they are done in the fridge, take them out and put them into the oven and have them cook for 10-15 minutes. If you would like them to be a bit more golden lean toward the time for 13-15 minutes for the cooking. I put the timer to 12 minutes and they came out actually okay!

Once cookies are finished cooking, let them cook on the tray for about 1 minute and 30 seconds. Place cookie onto tray and let cool COMPLETLEY!

Once cookies are finished cooling on the cooling rack, prepare the fillings that you will be using! (at bottom are different fillings that could be used)

Grab the 2 piping bags (unless you have other fillings you are using, the amount of fillings = the amount of piping bags)

And grab 2 knifes and prepare your piping bags to fill it with your desired fillings. Grab a scoop out with your knife and begin to put it into the piping bag. Once you have filled it with the desired amount, cut the ends off, only a little bit (not a whole lot off to be cut) and begin to frost the cookie with no hole in the middle. When you have frosted the cookie with no hole, place the cookie WITH the hole on top and press it down so the filling can come out through the hole. Repeat steps with other fillings that you will use.

Once you are done frosting the cookies, you can either dip the cookies into powdered sugar or sprinkle the powdered sugar on top. In my opinion, I would of done dipping it, so it could look more clean.

Finally, when you have finished decorating with the powdered sugar, the dessert is completely finished! Enjoy and share with your friends if you would like!

OTHER FILLINGS YOU COULD USE FOR THIS DESSERT:

To do these desserts you would repeat step 8 basically.

• lemon curd-good with lemon zest
• apricot jam
• chocolate spread
• homemade cookie butter

If you would like to make these cookies more festive, you can add food dye to the batter while assembling and festive sprinkles to top it off!

Thanks for reading!! <3