Good Ole Canadian Maple Syrupy Goodness in Cookie Format

The other day my Dad came home from a road trip out East and brought back a lovely bottle of pure maple syrup.  I was so excited to receive this lovely gift as I had been going on about getting back to the farmers' market to buy some before the end of October and the market closes for the winter.  You see, here on the prairies, there really isn't too much produce left at the farmers' markets by the end of October.  At this point market purchases include the last of the honey, maple syrup, preserves and canned/jarred items, baking, some storage (root) veggies, and handicrafts.  Now don't get me wrong, it is still a great place to go and make local purchases but as we await the snowfall, there just isn't too much left in the way of fresh produce.

I was looking for the perfect thing to make with my big ole bottle o maple syrupy goodness and low and behold one of the wonderful bloggers on Foodbuzz made a post about these Maple Cream Cookies she made.  She had gotten the recipe from another blogger who in turn found it in a Bon Appetit magazine from   December 2005.  And now I want to pass it on because this recipe was delectable!!  I give many thanks to her for posting this one as it got rave reviews came from everyone in the Little Kitchen.
I am somewhat ashamed (as a Canadian) to admit I do not have a maple leaf shaped cookie cutter in my kitchen.  I will have to pick one up in the very near future.  I went with the good old circle biscuit cutter as we all wanted to try these cookies so darn badly!

Regular readers are aware of my penchant for doubling recipes...If you're going to mess up the kitchen, make it worth your while. I did double the amounts given here so I could make plenty but I actually only rolled out part of this batch tonight and it yeilded a good 4 dozen sandwich cookies with 2 disks of dough still in the fridge to roll out tomorrow.

Maple Cream Cookies

In a bowl combine:

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

In the bowl of your mixer cream together:

• 1 cup butter, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar

Add and continue mixing until well mixed:

• 1 large egg
• 2 teaspoons maple extract

Add the flour mixture and mix well.

Form the dough into a couple of disks, wrap in plastice wrap and chill for an hour.

Dust your counter with flour and roll the dough out to desired thickness.  I like crisp cookies so I rolled the dough out fairly thin.
Bake at 375 degrees F for 8 to 10 minutes.  The amount of time baking in the oven can very depending on the oven and on your desired crispiness.  Check after 8 minutes to see how far along they are.

While the cookies are cooling, mix up the wonderful maple filling!
In the bowl of your mixer, cream together:

• 4 tablespoon butter, room temperature
• 1 cup confectioners sugar
• 2 tablespoon maple syrup

 Mix until you get a nice spreadable consistency.
Spread a small amount of filling on the back of  a cookie and sandwich another cookie on top!