12 Days of Cookies - Day 7 - Pecan Lace Sandwiches with Orange Buttercream

Welcome to Day 7 of the 12 Days of Cookies, in which our fearless heroine (that's me =P ) learns several valuable lessons.  Yes, Day 7 was supposed to be yesterday.  And no, yesterday did not go well...

You'd think I would have learned by now.  Baking when tired and in a really bad mood never ends well.  *sigh*  And yet, I tried to do it anyway.  Because I was trying to stay on schedule.  So that's one lesson--sometimes it's better just to go to bed and deal with stuff in the morning.  Otherwise, you end up with "lace" cookies that look like this:

And that's one of the good ones.  Lol. =)  So after some sleep, I took another look at things.  And decided to try making these cookies again.  Next lesson learned--apparently, when baking in a bad mood, precise measuring goes out the window.  I'm pretty sure that for last night's batch, I managed to use too little corn syrup (that's what I get for eyeballing it), too many nuts (didn't think throwing in those last few from the bottom of the container would make that much difference), and too much flour (did dip & sweep instead of weighing, which I almost never do).  So combine all those and what do you get?  If you said a sort of dry, crumbly dough, you win!  Now I haven't made lace cookies before, but as an experienced baker, I should have realized that something was wrong.  Okay, to be honest, I did suspect that something was wrong, but I kept going anyway.  Not the brightest thing I've ever done.  After proper measuring, my dough/batter looked much better, and resulted in cookies that look like this:

Now that looks like a lace cookie!

I did make a couple small changes to the recipe.  I added a big pinch of kosher salt to the cookie dough/batter.  Most of the cookies I left flat, but I did try putting a few on my rolling pin to get tuiles.  Pretty cool.  For the filling, I made a few sandwiches with melted chocolate, just for the heck of it.  For the buttercream, I used zest and juice from a satsuma since that's what I had in the fridge.  I also added a pinch of salt to the buttercream.

The verdict?  These are really tasty!  I love the lacey texture of the cookies--very pretty.  And the buttercream is delicious.  The two together are a bit sweet, but the salt I added definitely helps with that.  I haven't had a chance to get any other opinions, so I'll have to get back to you with what the rest of the family thinks.  Now that I've figured out what I did wrong the first time, I'll definitely be making these again.

If you'd like to try them for yourself, you can find the recipe here.  And be sure to check out the other bakers participating in the 12 Days of Cookies to see what they've baked up for yesterday and today!  =)

Andrea of Andrea's Recipes

(honorary member and our founder but not participating this year)

Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen

Courtney of Coco Cooks

Judy of No Fear Entertaining

Kelly of Sass & Veracity

Michelle of Big Black Dog

RJ of Flamingo Musings

Sandy of At the Baker's Bench

Tiffany of The Nesting Project