These chewy chocolate sandwich cookies are filled with a silky cream cheese buttercream flavored with Irish cream liqueur. They’re the perfect treat to make for St Paddy’s or for anyone who loves Irish cream! Leave them as is or dunk in extra chocolate and top with your favorite mix-ins like sprinkles, nuts, or toffee bits.
Tips for making chewy chocolate cookies
Chocolate cookies can sometimes be tricky to get just right. Cocoa powder absorbs so much liquid, so you’re often left with a thick and cakey cookie. But for this recipe, the addition of an extra egg yolk and more sugar makes them thin but chewy, perfect for sandwich cookies.
To make sure your chocolate cookies turn out just right, here’s my top baking tips:
- Don’t overheat the butter – Espresso is infused into the butter to help deepen the chocolate flavor of these cookies. In doing so, you want to heat the butter and espresso just until the espresso is completely dissolved. If you heat the butter further, water will evaporate and leave you with less butter than you started with. Less butter means more dry and thick cookies.
- Properly measure the flour – I say this in every post, and for good reason. It’s the number one reason why most recipes fail, especially for cookies. If there’s too much flour, the cookies will not spread properly. If you can, measure the flour with a food scale. Otherwise, to ensure you use the exact amount needed, gently spoon the flour into your measuring cup and level if off with a flat edge. If you scoop directly into the flour container, it packs it down into the cup which could leave you with 1/4 cup or more of added flour.
- Use dark cocoa powder – For the best flavor, I recommend using Hershey’s special dark unsweetened cocoa powder as it can be found at most grocery stores. Not only does it create a darker color, but it also gives these cookies a really rich and deep flavor.
- Flatten the cookies before baking – In order to get a thin but chewy cookie, the dough is pressed flat before baking. This ensures the cookies spread evenly. If you find your cookies aren’t spreading enough, it could just be that you need to flatten them even more before popping them in the oven.
How to make Irish cream buttercream
The cookies have tons of flavor, but it doesn’t outshine the silky Irish cream filling. Cream cheese gives it a slight tang, while the Irish cream liqueur gives the filling so much flavor and richness.
This recipe is also very basic, comprised of butter, cream cheese, sugar, and salt alongside the Irish cream.
I recommend mixing the buttercream together using all of the ingredients minus the Irish cream. Then, you can mix in 1 or 2 tablespoons of the liqueur, depending on how strong you like it.
If the 2 tablespoon maximum isn’t enough for you, you can add one more and then add another 1/2 cup of powdered sugar to help thicken the buttercream. It must be stable enough to not squish out the sides of the cookie, so make sure it isn’t too thin after any additional liqueur.
The easiest way to fill sandwich cookies
When your buttercream is prepped and ready to go, you have a couple application options depending on what you have in your kitchen.
My first recommendation would be to use a piping bag fitted with a large round tip (or any large tip you have). This will make for the cleanest application, and it’s much easier to control the amount of buttercream used per cookie.
If you don’t have piping tips, you can just use the piping bag with the end snipped off or you can even use a large ziplock bag for a corner cut off.
Either way, you want to pipe on just enough buttercream to get an even application, but you don’t want it to be too thick to where it smooshes out the sides. Simply pipe a thin swirl all around the surface of the cookie, leaving a small empty border around the edge. Once you press the other cookie on top, the buttercream will fill that border to reach all the way to the end of the cookie, giving you the perfect cookie-to-filling ratio.
How to store Irish cream sandwich cookies
First and foremost, I highly recommend making these the day you plan to serve them. Otherwise, I find the cookies go a bit stale when stored with the buttercream.
Otherwise, you can keep them at room temperature in an air tight container for one day, or store in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.
For more cookie recipes, check out my:
- BEST EVER Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Brown Butter Oatmeal Cookies
- Butter Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Make sure to tag me @butternutbakery on Instagram and comment below if you make these Irish Cream Filled Chocolate Cookies. To pin this recipe and save it for later, you can use the button on the recipe card or on any of the photos above. Happy baking!
PrintIrish Cream Filled Chocolate Sandwich Cookies
- Total Time: 40 minutes + 1 hour chilling
- Yield: 8–10 sandwich cookies 1x
Description
Rich and chewy chocolate cookies filled with silky Irish cream buttercream and dunked in chocolate.
Ingredients
Chocolate Cookies
- 1/2 cup (110g) unsalted butter
- 1–2 tsp instant espresso powder (depending on your flavor preference)
- 1 1/4 cups (165g) all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup (40g) unsweetened dark cocoa powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 cups (300g) granulated sugar
- 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Irish Cream Buttercream
- 1/4 cup (55g) unsalted butter, room temp
- 2 oz full fat cream cheese, room temp
- 2 cups (240g) powdered sugar
- 1–2 tbsp Irish cream liqueur (depending on your flavor preference)
- Pinch of salt
Chocolate Coating
- 1 cup (160g) dark chocolate chips
- 2 tsp coconut oil
- Chocolate sprinkles and/or finely chopped hazelnuts
Instructions
Chocolate Cookies
- Preheat the oven to 350F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Once it’s completely melted down, add the espresso and stir to combine. Allow the butter to bubble for about a minute or until the espresso is completely dissolved.
- Pour the butter into a large mixing bowl and let it cool for about 10 minutes.
- While that cools, whisk togther the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.
- Now to the butter, whisk in the sugar followed by the egg, egg yolk and vanilla.
- Pour in the dry ingredients and fold to combine. It may look like it won’t come together, but just keep folding until you get a thick chocolate dough.
- Using a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop, scoop out 5-6 cookies on to your baking sheet (cover the rest of the dough with plastic wrap to prevent it from drying out). Roll the dough into balls and press to flatten. Bake for 8-10 minutes. The cookies will come out puffed but should settle and flatten as they cool**. You end up with a total of about 20 cookies.
- Allow the cookies to cool completely (about 30 minutes) before making the cream filling.
Irish Cream Buttercream
- Using a hand or stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, cream together the butter and cream cheese until smooth.
- Mix in the powdered sugar one cup at a time, followed by the Irish cream liqueur and salt.
- Transfer the buttercream to a piping bag fitted with a large round tip (or a large ziplock bag with the corner snipped off).
- Pipe the buttercream in a thin and even layer on 10 of the 20 cookies. Then press the other 10 cookies on top.
- Place the cookies in the refrigerator while you make the chocolate coating.
Chocolate Coating
- In a heat safe bowl (I recommend something tall but wide like a 2 cup measuring glass), add the chocolate and coconut oil. Microwave in 30 seconds intervals, mixing between each time, until smooth and creamy.
- Dunk half of each cookie into the chocolate and place on a tray lined with parchment paper. While the chocolate is still wet, sprinkle on your toppings.
- Place the cookies back in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes to allow the chocolate to set. Then enjoy!
Notes
**If your cookies are not flattening, it could be that too much flour was used (always spoon the flour into your measuring cup and never scoop straight out of your flour bag or container) or the dough was not flattened enough before baked. Press the dough down even more with the next round of cookies and they should spread more.
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
Keywords: chocolate cookies, chocolate sandwich cookies, irish cream cookies, st patricks day desserts
Hey Jenna, I always love your recipes and your whole blog. Sorry to be nosy but when are you getting married?
Thank you! It was supposed to be this week but we moved our wedding back to next year 🙁
This recipe was delicious!! I made two batches and for the second I used a smaller cookie scoop because they were a little bit big for me personally. Any idea or guess as to how many calories one of the cookie sandwiches would be? If not, that’s okay! This recipe was lovely and I will remake it every St. Patty’s Day ☘️ ☺️
★★★★★