Brownie Cookie Sandwiches with Orange Spice Buttercream

What's better than a brownie? ... a brownie in cookie form! These cookies are fudgy and chewy just like brownies and are even better when you sandwich orange spice buttercream between two of them.

Ingredients:

• Brownie Cookies
  • 12 oz Semi-sweet chocolate chopped or chips divided
  • 4 tbsp unsalted butter
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla bean paste 
  • 2/3 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
• Orange Spice Swiss Meringue Buttercream

  • 1/4 Sweetalopia SMB recipe here (she does a great job describing the process :)

  • 1 tsp orange zest

  • 1/2 tsp ground ginger

  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon

  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg

Directions:

Brownie Cookies:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a small sauce pan over low heat, melt 6oz of the chocolate with the butter and then set aside.

In a large mixing bowl with a hand mixer, whip together the eggs, vanilla and sugar until light and fluffy. Once you have gotten the mixture to this consistency (which can take up to 10 minutes) stir in the flour, baking powder, the melted chocolate mixture and remaining 6 oz of chocolate.

Spoon by the tablespoon onto a cookie sheet prepared with parchment and bake for 10-12 minutes. Then, place on a wire cooling rack. 

Orange Spice Swiss Meringue Buttercream:

I have included a link to Sweetalopia. She does a great job of describing the process of SMB. (far better than I can do) If you are not familer with Swiss Meringue Buttercream, it is a velvety, less sweet verision of the typical powdered sugar laden buttercreams you may be used to. I prefer the Swiss Meringue Buttercream flavor 100% to the overly sweet verison.

For this filling I cut down her recipe by fourth (you will need and kitchen scale and maybe a calculater if you are bad at math like me). To make it orange spice, I added orange zest ground ginger, ground cinnamon, and nutmeg in the final stages.

Now just spoon some of the buttercream between two cookies and enjoy!