Alfajores Con Cajeta (Vanilla Shortbread With Goat's-Milk Toffee)

Flecked with vanilla seeds throughout the dough, alfajores are the perfect excuse to whip up a batch of vanilla bean cajeta—a goat's-milk variation on dulce de leche. The combination of sticky toffee sauce and buttery shortbread can't be beat, but it can be improved upon. My recipe replaces traditional cornstarch with tapioca starch, keeping the alfajores tender and light.

Shortbread Cookie Sandwich With Dulce De Leche

These Shortbread Cookie Sandwiches are just 3 ingredients and take only 10 min to prepare! Filled with Dulce De Leche for a sweet Latino twist, these easy little sweets require just 1 ingredient and 15 sec to prepare!

Chocolate Shortbread Sandwich Cookies

Chocolate does double duty in these crunchy shortbread cookies sandwiched with a creamy and decadent dark chocolate ganache.

Polvorones (Spanish Lard Cookies)

These lard cookies were significantly different from the biscochitos I grew up with: instead of flour, the cookie dough uses a mixture of ground almonds and flour that are toasted in the oven briefly before being added to the dough. Grated orange peel gives the cookies the zest needed to cut the richness of the lard.

Hazelnut Cookies With Milk Chocolate

Homemade hazelnut butter gives these soft and chewy cookies a rich flavor, one that's best supported by a light drizzle of milk chocolate. If you'd rather not temper the chocolate, give it a rough chop and stir it into the finished dough instead; the results will be a little more homey in appearance, but they'll taste just as fancy.

E.L. Fudge-Style Chocolate and Vanilla Sandwich Cookies

With crisp and crunchy vanilla wafers sandwiching a dark-chocolate cream filling, these shortbread cookies taste as magical as if they'd been prepared by an elf. Of course, they can be made with whatever cookie cutters you have on hand, but when it comes to whipping up a batch of copycat E.L. Fudge, owl fudge cookies sound just about right.

Salted Dulce de Leche Brownies

These rich, super fudgy brownies are topped with generous dollops of homemade dulce de leche and a generous sprinkle of sea salt. The thick layer of dulce de leche has the same fudgy texture as the brownie underneath, and the salt wakes the whole thing up. Consider yourself warned, because you're gonna want to make these every day.

Baking with Dorie: Chocolate-Dipped Linzer Hearts

If you haven't already whipped up something wonderful for the sweetheart(s) in your life, here's a recipe for a cookie that makes any day sweeter. It's a linzer cookie—made with flour and ground nuts and spiced with cinnamon and cloves—cut out with a cute little heart-shaped cutter and dipped in melted chocolate.

Chocolate Dipped Almond Horns

These horseshoe-shaped crescents have a moist and chewy interior that yields under a crunchy almond coating.

Chocolate Dipped Almond Pretzel Cookies

These almond butter cookies are twisted into the shape of a pretzel and dipped in dark chocolate.