When I had some extra mascarpone cheese on hand recently, I decided to use it up by making Emily Luchetti's recipe for "Reverse Moons" in Four-Star Desserts. Luchetti was the pastry chef at the late Stars restaurant in San Francisco. Her first cookbook, Stars Desserts, included a recipe for star-shaped chocolate shortbread sandwich cookies with vanilla-mascarpone filling that were served at the restaurant and accordingly named "Stareos." She switched around the flavors for the Reverse Moons, which are vanilla shortbread cookies sandwiched around chocolate-mascarpone filling. Luchetti suggests making them a crescent moon shape -- to complement the Stareos -- but I decided to skip that hassle and just make them round.
This recipe only requires a handful of ingredients -- four for the cookies and four for the filling. To make the cookies, you mix cold butter with sugar, vanilla, and flour. You roll out the dough, cut it (I used a 2-inch round cutter), and chill the cookies for an hour before baking. I made a batch and a half of cookie dough and got 80 cookies. The filling is mascarpone cheese mixed with melted bittersweet chocolate, with a little sugar and cocoa powder added. I put it into a pasty bag with a star tip to pipe on the filling.
I loved these cookies. The vanilla shortbread was substantial (I followed the directions to roll the dough a quarter-inch thick) and buttery. The filling was rich and creamy and not overly sweet. And even though the recipe says that the cookies taste best the day they are assembled, I found that they held up surprisingly well for a few days in the refrigerator. The cookies softened up a little, but they didn't become soggy -- instead they became just soft enough that the cookies didn't crumble when you took a bite.
I only tried this recipe to use up some mascarpone cheese but was rewarded with some truly outstanding cookies. I own a copy of Stars Desserts and haven't made the Stareo recipe yet -- but now I think I'm going to have to give them a try as well!
Recipe: "Reverse Moons" from Four-Star Desserts by Emily Luchetti.
This recipe only requires a handful of ingredients -- four for the cookies and four for the filling. To make the cookies, you mix cold butter with sugar, vanilla, and flour. You roll out the dough, cut it (I used a 2-inch round cutter), and chill the cookies for an hour before baking. I made a batch and a half of cookie dough and got 80 cookies. The filling is mascarpone cheese mixed with melted bittersweet chocolate, with a little sugar and cocoa powder added. I put it into a pasty bag with a star tip to pipe on the filling.
I only tried this recipe to use up some mascarpone cheese but was rewarded with some truly outstanding cookies. I own a copy of Stars Desserts and haven't made the Stareo recipe yet -- but now I think I'm going to have to give them a try as well!
Recipe: "Reverse Moons" from Four-Star Desserts by Emily Luchetti.
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