Alfajores | Ash Baber (2024)

I recently learnt about these Argentinian cookies called alfajores.

I LOVE ALFAJORES. They’re extremely soft crumbly cookies that are filled with dulce de leche.

They’re so good, amazing texture, amazing flavour and also pretty easy to make.

These cookies are filled with dulce de leche.

You have 2 options, you can make the recipe much easier by buying the dulce de leche. Or you can make the dulce de leche yourself.

Making it is super easy, but it takes a long time. So honestly, if you are able to buy…just buy it.

• Fill a large pot with water.
• Place this pot onto medium heat and let the water come to a boil.
• Take the paper wrapping off from a can of condensed milk, then add this into the pot (I did 2 cans, BUT you only need 1, I just wanted an extra can of dulce de leche).
• Make sure that the can if fully submerged in the water.
• Leave this to boil for 4 hours.

2-3 hours is normally long enough to make dulce de leche, but we want a thick one, so 4 hours is better.

Make sure to keep adding water into your pot.

You want the can to be fully submerged in the water the whole time. If the water goes below the can, it can end up exploding.

This is not good.

So keep adding more water, making sure the can is submerged the whole time.

But after 4 hours, take the can out and leave it to cool completely before opening it.

Now that the dulce de leche has been made (or been bought), we can make the cookies woohoo.

They’re very simple to make. Here are the ingredients you will need to make them:

• Unsalted butter – make sure this is softened. It will be extremely difficult to make this cookie dough with cold butter.
• Icing sugar – also known as powdered sugar.
• Vanilla extract
• Lemon zest– just for some extra flavour.
• Egg yolks
• Plain flour – also known as all purpose flour.
• Corn flour – also known as corn starch. This is what’s going to make the cookies super soft and crumbly.
• Baking powder

Once the cookie dough has been made, we’re going to roll it out and then cut circles out of it.

After this, make sure to leave these cookie dough circles to chill in your fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Don’t try skipping this step.

The cookie dough will be a little too soft to bake straight away. If you bake them without chilling, the cookies will just spread too much.

We don’t want this.

So chill your cookie dough circles.

But then after, you can bake them. They don’t bake for long, just about 10 minutes.

The best way to fill them is to add your dulce de leche into a piping bag that has been fitted with a round tip, then pipe dollops of this onto your cookies.

Or you could use a spoon, use whatever you have.

But then sandwich the cookies together and you’re done.

From what I’ve seen, at this point alfajores are sometimes then rolled in some desiccated coconut, which sticks to the dulce de leche.

I didn’t have any desiccated coconut though, so I skipped this part. But you can do add coconut if you want to.

I lied.

I did have desiccated coconut.

I bought it specifically for this.

But I forgot to use it I don’t want to talk about it.

Anyway, the cookies are done.

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