Espejitos from Uruguay

Espejitos or small mirrors is the literal translation of these cookies from Uruguay. They are made as a shortbread cookie, filled with jam and the caramel cream dulce de leche and have a chocolate covering. Sounds good? I just love these cookies, jam PLUS, caramel, PLUS chocolate, who can say no to that? Unfortunately it never takes long and they disappear so quickly whenever I make them, I simply can’t say no. These are my fourth recipe of my Uruguayan cookie week, check out the other recipes here.

This is cookie No. 4 in my Uruguayan cookie week. I was ambitious enough to publish a Uruguayan cookie recipe for seven days straight. It definitely is a challenge, that I can promise you. You ask why? Well, that’s because in Latin America recipes are barely written down, a lot of the cooking and baking is done “al ojo” so more by eye sight, not exact measures. It can easily happen that you enter a Uruguayan kitchen to find the oven being used as another storage area. If you open the oven door, you may see pots and pans, but no baking sheets or other surprising utensils. Baking simply is not that common.

But be it as it may, I wanted to challenge myself to publish seven delicious cookie recipes from my birth country Uruguay. Even if this meant experimenting with this “al ojo” non-measurement until I was happy. I have published some recipes here that did require a lot of tweaking before I was happy, but that was not the case with these espejito cookies. Shortbread cookies? Easy. I even have an entire blog post how to guarantee perfect shortbread cookies. I also have one full blog post about how to make dulce de leche the simple way, I always have homemade dulce de leche in our home. And other than that, this cookies are all about melting chocolate and sandwiching together, nothing simpler than that!

Credit: Freely adapted from Buen dia Uruguay (Youtube in Spanish)

Print Recipe

Espejitos from Uruguay

Serves: About 15, depending on size

Prep Time: 1 hr 30min – Cooking Time: 10min – Total Time: 1 hr 30min

These espejitos cookies from Uruguay are a shortbread cookie with dulce de leche, jam, and chocolate.

Ingredients

• 250 grams of all-purpose flour
• 170 gr of cold butter
• 60 grams of regular sugar
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, see here how to make your own
• 1 egg yolk
• About 150 grams of dulce de leche, see here how to make your own
• About 100 grams of semi-sweet chocolate
• 1 tablespoon of canola oil
• About 100 grams of strawberry or raspberry jam

Instructions

1

Put flour, butter and sugar in a large bowl and rub into crumbs the size of peas. Add vanilla extract and egg yolk and work into a ball as quickly as you can. Wrap and chill for at least half an hour or overnight.

2

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius, line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Roll out part of the dough on a lightly floured surface. Cut out cookies, either with a cookie cutter or a glass. Repeat with all the dough. Cut into half of the cookie a smaller circle. I used the back of a Wilton tip. Place cookies on prepared baking sheet. Bake cookies for about 10 minutes. Chill cookies that are not baked immediately. Repeat with the entire dough, let cookies chill.

3

Pipe an outer ring of dulce de leche on the full cookies. Melt the chocolate on low heat or a microwave with the canola oil and spread with a spoon on the cookies with a hole. Sandwich the chocolate cookies with a hole on the full cookies with the dulce de leche. See picture for visual. Heat the jam so it gets liquid and fill into the holes. Chill the cookies and enjoy once the chocolate and jam has set.

Notes

These cookies keep wonderfully in an airtight container and can be frozen.