Brown Sugar Stars with Maple Buttercream Filling

 

Hey blog friends!  I hope you are all having a good weekend.  Today I am cranky.  I tried napping, walking, cleaning and nothing could snap me out of my pregnant crankiness despite my efforts, so I resorted to making myself some tasty treats.

I pretty much decided to wing it, based on my ingredients on hand, and I'm happy with these results.  The brown sugar cookie stars are very buttery and delicious, and the maple filling seems to fit in with the beginning of fall.

Ingredients:
Cookies:
1/3 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup shortening
3/4 cup brown sugar
dash salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour

Maple buttercream:
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 1/12 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk

Mix together, your butter, shortening and sugar until well blended, add in the rest of your ingredients except for the flour, and blend.  Finally add in the flour a little at a time, until you have a nice even dough.  Form into 2 balls, and pop it in the freezer for a couple of minutes.

Roll out your dough and cut out your cookies into your desired shape.  I obviously went for a star to switch things up, though for sandwiching purposes, a simple circle would probably be easier.

Bake at 375F for 8 minutes. The bake time on these was perfect.  Let the cookies cool and prepare your frosting.

Homemade frosting is so easy to make. And so very delish.  First off, mix together your softened butter and flavoring (in this case maple syrup).  Then slowly add in your powdered sugar on low speed, in order to avoid powdered sugar explosions.  Finally mix in your milk a little at a time until you reach the desired consistancy.  I used a hand held mixer for all of this.

 

Yum.  Pipe your frosting onto the bottom side of half of your cooled cookies.  You could also just spread it with a knife, but I was trying to keep things neat.

 



Then sandwich :) And refrigerate.  I think I should have thickened up my frosting a little bit more, as it was pretty gooey.  Tasty for sure, but gooey.

Ta Da!  I'm happy with these, very yummy.  You could even do a little sprinkle of cinnamon and powdered sugar on top.  Definitely worth a try.  As for my pregnant grumpiness, they didn't really help that much, save for the few moments of blissful cookie eating.  But it was worth a shot.

oh yeah.... Munch helped :)

Happy Baking!