Carob Alfajores – Argentine Sandwich Cookies
Alfajores are Argentina's sandwich cookies: two soft rounds with a generous dulce de leche filling. This version uses carob flour, from the algarrobo tree of the Argentine northwest, which brings a toasty, faintly chocolatey sweetness and needs less sugar than cocoa.
The one trap is the baking. Carob darkens the dough, so you cannot judge doneness by color — go by the clock, 8-12 minutes, or you will pull them out already dry.
Work the dough as little as possible: developed gluten turns a tender cookie into a hard one.
🔎 What is dulce de leche? — where it comes from, what goes in it and how it differs.
Ingredients
- 150 g all-purpose flour (plain flour)
- 50 g carob flour
- 100 g soft butter
- 80 g muscovado or regular sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 pinch of salt
- 300 g thick pastry-grade dulce de leche
- Optional: shredded coconut for the edges, or a bittersweet chocolate coating
Method
- 1
In a bowl, sift together the all-purpose flour, the carob flour, the baking powder and the salt.
- 2
In another bowl, beat the soft butter with the muscovado sugar until combined. Add the yolk and mix well.
- 3
Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture. Bring it together without kneading much — developing gluten would make the cookies hard — until you have a tender dough. Wrap it in plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- 4
Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about 5 mm thick. Cut rounds with a cutter and lay them on a baking sheet.
- 5
Bake at 180 °C for 8-12 minutes. Watch the clock rather than the color: carob darkens the dough and there is no golden edge to look for.
- 6
Let the rounds cool completely. Sandwich them with a generous layer of thick dulce de leche and, if you like, roll the edges in shredded coconut.
The Dulce de Leche Trail: Argentina's Sweetest Flavor
If one flavor defines Argentina and takes you straight back to childhood, it is dulce de leche. These are the recipes where this milk caramel plays the lead: from cooking your own from scratch to the best ways to use it. A tribute to the most generous and comforting sweet in the Argentine kitchen.
