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A Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich takes everything great about a soft, brown-sugar chocolate chip cookie and doubles it around a swirl of fudgy chocolate buttercream, and the batch I baked on a rainy Sunday afternoon vanished before the cooling rack hit the sink. If cookie cravings run deep in your house, our lunch lady peanut butter cookies are the next bake to bookmark.
One bowl of dough, one quick buttercream, and thirty minutes stand between you and bakery-style sandwich cookies.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich Quick Look
- 🕒 Prep Time: 15 minutes
- 🌡️ Cook Time: 12 minutes
- ⏳ Total Time: 27 minutes
- 🍽️ Serving: 32 cookies (16 sandwiches)
- ⚡ Calories: 218kcal
- 🌶️ Flavor Profile: Sweet and fudgy (soft brown sugar chocolate chip cookies hugging chocolate buttercream)
- ✋ Difficulty: Easy, on par with our oatmeal raisin cookies
Quick Answer
Cream butter with granulated and brown sugar, beat in eggs and vanilla, mix in flour, baking powder, and salt, then fold in milk chocolate chips. Bake tablespoon-sized dough balls at 350 degrees F for 10 to 12 minutes and cool completely. Whip butter, powdered sugar, and cocoa powder with vanilla and milk into a chocolate buttercream, pipe it onto half the cookies, and top each with a second cookie.
Jump to:
- Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich Quick Look
- Quick Answer
- Why This Recipe Works
- Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Key Ingredients
- Variations and Substitutions
- How to Make Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich
- Recipe Tips & Tricks
- Serving Ideas and Suggestions
- Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich FAQs
- Other Recommended Easy Cookie Recipes
- Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich Recipe (Sandwich Cookies)
Why This Recipe Works
Click to see the technique science
- Two sugars, two jobs. Granulated sugar gives the cookies crisp edges while brown sugar keeps the centers soft and chewy, the perfect structure for sandwiching without crumbling.
- Tablespoon scoops keep pairs even. Uniform 1 tablespoon dough balls bake into same-size cookies, so every sandwich top matches its bottom.
- Baking powder bakes them puffy. Unlike flatter all-baking-soda cookies, a little lift gives each cookie a soft cake-edge crumb that bites cleanly through the filling.
- The buttercream needs cocoa, not melted chocolate. Cocoa powder keeps the frosting stable at room temperature and pipeable straight from the bowl, with deep chocolate flavor in every swirl.
- Milk goes in a tablespoon at a time. Adding liquid gradually lets you stop at exactly pipeable, stiff enough to hold the sandwich together, soft enough to bite through.
- Cooling is not optional. Even slightly warm cookies melt the buttercream into a slick. Five minutes on the sheet plus a full cool on the rack guarantees clean swirls.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Bakery treat, pantry ingredients. Flour, butter, sugar, cocoa, and chips. Nothing fancy, and the result looks like a $5 bakery cookie.
- Built for celebrations. A platter of these disappears at bake sales, birthday parties, and school events faster than our meltaway lemon cookies, and that is saying something.
- Make-ahead magic. Bake the cookies one day, fill the next. They actually taste better after the buttercream has settled in overnight.
Key Ingredients
Pantry staples build both the cookies and the fudgy filling. Quantities are in the recipe card below; here is why each one earns its spot.
- Butter. It stars twice: creamed into the dough for tender cookies, then whipped into the buttercream for a silky filling. Soften it on the counter first.
- Brown and granulated sugar. The tag team behind soft centers and lightly crisp edges, exactly the texture a sandwich cookie needs.
- Milk chocolate chips. Sweeter and creamier than semi-sweet, they keep every bite kid-approved. Use minis for more even chips per cookie.
- Cocoa powder. The heart of the buttercream. Unsweetened cocoa brings deep chocolate flavor while keeping the frosting pipeable and stable.
- Powdered sugar. Dissolves into the buttercream for a completely smooth swirl, no graininess, just like in our chocolate cream cheese frosting.
See recipe card for exact quantities.
Variations and Substitutions
One sandwich cookie, endless personalities. Try these spins.
- Switch the filling. Vanilla buttercream, peanut butter frosting, or our cream cheese frosting all pair beautifully with the chocolate chip cookies.
- Roll the edges. Press the filled sandwich edges into mini chips, sprinkles, or chopped nuts for a bakery-case finish.
- Make ice cream sandwiches. Swap the buttercream for a scoop of slightly softened ice cream and freeze for an hour.
- Go double chocolate. Swap a quarter cup of flour for cocoa powder in the dough for chocolate-on-chocolate sandwiches.
- Size them up. Use a 2 tablespoon scoop and add a minute or two of bake time for big bakery-style sandwiches; you will get 8 instead of 16.
How to Make Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line 2 baking sheets with parchment. Mix the flour, salt, and baking powder together in a medium bowl and set aside.
- Beat the butter with an electric mixer until creamy. Add both sugars and beat until light and fluffy, then beat in the eggs and vanilla until combined.
- Mix the dry ingredients into the wet just until no flour streaks remain, then add the milk chocolate chips.
- Fold the chips through the dough until they are evenly distributed.
- Roll 1 tablespoon sized balls of dough and space them out on the prepared baking sheets.
- Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until lightly browned at the edges. Cool 5 minutes on the sheets, then move to cooling racks to cool completely.
- Meanwhile, make the buttercream: cream the butter, powdered sugar, and cocoa powder, then add the vanilla and milk one tablespoon at a time until the frosting is smooth and pipeable.
- Fit a piping bag with a large tip and pipe a generous swirl of buttercream onto the flat side of half the cooled cookies.
- Top each frosted cookie with a second cookie, flat side down, and press gently to spread the filling to the edges. Enjoy!
Recipe Tips & Tricks
- Soften the butter properly. It should dent with light pressure but not look greasy. Cold butter will not cream; melted butter spreads the cookies thin.
- Use a cookie scoop. Identical dough balls mean identical cookies, which means sandwich tops and bottoms that actually match.
- Do not overbake. Pull the cookies when the edges are barely golden and the centers still look soft; they finish setting on the hot sheet.
- Cool completely before filling. Even a little warmth melts buttercream into a mess. Patience equals pretty swirls.
- Pair cookies by size first. Match the closest twins before piping so every sandwich sits flat.
- Pipe from the center out. A swirl starting in the middle spreads evenly to the edges when you press the top cookie on.
Serving Ideas and Suggestions
Stack these on a dessert platter next to our cream cheese cookies and meltaway lemon cookies and watch the chocolate ones go first every time.
For an over-the-top summer treat, sandwich a scoop of no churn moose tracks ice cream between two unfrosted cookies and freeze for an hour. Ice cream sandwich, solved.
They keep 3 days in an airtight container at room temperature or 5 in the fridge, and they travel like champs in lunchboxes. Serving a crowd? Add a batch of lunch lady peanut butter cookies and a pitcher of cold milk and call it a party.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich FAQs
A Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich is two soft chocolate chip cookies filled with frosting, here a fudgy chocolate buttercream made from butter, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla, and milk. Think of it as a homemade, fresher take on the bakery-case sandwich cookie.
Three things: bake the cookies just to lightly browned so they stay soft, cool them completely before filling, and keep the buttercream stiff enough to hold its swirl. Press the top cookie gently; squeezing hard pushes the filling out and cracks the cookie.
Yes. Bake the cookies up to 2 days ahead and store them airtight, then fill the day you serve. Fully assembled sandwiches keep 3 days at room temperature or 5 in the fridge, and the texture is even better on day two once the buttercream settles in.
Absolutely. Freeze assembled sandwiches in a single layer, then layer them with parchment in an airtight container for up to 3 months. Thaw at room temperature for about 30 minutes, or eat them half-frozen on a hot day; they are fantastic that way.
This recipe uses a quick chocolate buttercream of butter, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla, and milk. Vanilla buttercream, peanut butter frosting, cream cheese frosting, or even marshmallow fluff all work; just keep the filling thick enough to stay put when pressed.
The dough makes about 32 small cookies from tablespoon-sized balls, which pairs up into 16 sandwich cookies. Want bakery-sized ones? Scoop 2 tablespoon balls and bake a minute or two longer for 8 large sandwiches.
Cookie jar still looking empty? Our easy almond cookies are the melt-in-your-mouth batch to bake next.
Add our nostalgic orange creamsicle cookies to your cookie tray.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich Recipe (Sandwich Cookies)
Ingredients
Cookies:
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup butter
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- ¾ cup brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 ½ cups milk chocolate chips
Chocolate Buttercream:
- 1 ½ cups powdered sugar
- ½ cup butter
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2-3 Tablespoons milk
- ⅓ cup cocoa powder
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease or lay down parchment paper on 2 baking sheets.
- In a medium bowl, add flour, salt, and baking powder and mix together. Set aside.
- With an electric mixer, beat butter until creamy. Add sugars and beat again until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until combined.
- Fold in chocolate chips until incorporated.
- Roll 1 tablespoon sized balls of dough and place on baking sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes until lightly browned. Cool 5 minutes before placing onto cooling racks.
- In the meantime, make the buttercream. Cream butter, powdered sugar, and cocoa powder until creamy. Add in the vanilla and milk, a tablespoon at a time, until desired consistency is reached.
- Put the buttercream into a piping bag fitted with any larger tip and pipe icing onto the cookie. Place the second cookie on top.
- Enjoy!
Notes
- Use any of your favorite chocolate chips for this recipe.
- This makes a larger batch, you can halve or double if you’d like.
- Different mix-ins can be added to switch up the flavor, see my tips above.
- You can use other buttercreams or fillings as well, again see tips above.
- These can be frozen.
Nutrition
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