Guava and Cream Cheese Cookies

Directions

1. Pink Peppercorn Cookies
2. In a standing bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the vanilla extract. In another bowl, mix all the dry ingredients both flours, salt, baking powder and crushed pink peppercorns and give it a stir. Add the dry ingredients in the butter and sugar mix and let the stand mixer go on for just a few minutes until everything gets well incorporated. Make sure to scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula to make sure everything gets well incorporated. The dough will look crumbly, don’t worry. It will come together. Transfer the dough on a parchment paper. With the help of your hands, form a round flat disc and bring it together, cover the dough with parchment paper and keep it in the refrigerator for at least for an hour. While it rests in the fridge, make cream cheese and guava filling – Check below. You can freeze the dough at this point for long time if you plan to bake cookies some other day. If not, then proceed with the next step.
3. Pre-heat the oven to 350 F. Remove the cookies from the fridge. Lightly dust some flour and gently, roll out a flat or round shape disc about an inch on the sides. Using a cookie cutter, cut the desired shaped cookies. Re-roll the dough into disc until you have all the cookie cut out. Move cookies to a tray and freeze them for 5 minutes. If your cookies are very soft leave them in fridge for a little bit longer. Place cookies on parchment lined baking sheet and bake them for 10-12 minutes until you see the sides have little bit of browning and they look done. They will not be extremely crispy when you remove them, but they crisp up eventually as they cool down. Remove the cookies on a cooling rack and let them cool down completely.

1. Guava Cream Cheese Filling
2. In a food processor add the cream cheese, butter, confectioner’s sugar, vanilla, salt and guava paste and pulse few seconds until it looks smooth and guava paste has broken down and mixed thoroughly. It should not have any lumps and should look smooth. Once the cookies cool down completely, fill a piping bag or ziplock bag with cream cheese guava filling.
3. Cut out the end of piping bag about half an inch and pipe blobs of cream on half of the cookies. Make sure you keep the other half cookies away and not end up piping all cookies. Cover the cream filled cookies with another cookie making a sandwich. Store cookies in the fridge and remove them whenever you are ready to serve.
4. Pink peppercorn has a very light floral taste. If you cannot find any or wish to leave it out. It’s optional. 3 tbsp guava paste was enough for me, but if you want more guava flavor add little bit more. You can increase the amount of sugar in the filling. I wanted perfect balance of sweet and slight tart ness. You can keep the cookies slightly thicker. Depending on the cookie cutter you use, it will yield more or less than suggested quantities. I used 2 -inch cookie cutter and ½ -inch thickness.