Last weekend’s mission to Borough Park was a sweet success thanks to the Italian sandwich butter cookies at Royal Crown Bakery, one of the top bakeries in Brooklyn.

Apart from being one of my favorites at bakery counters, I don’t know much about the sandwich butter cookie, except that its two layers are glued together with raspberry jam, and locked on one end with a dip of chocolate and multicolor sprinkles. As Italian cuisine is primo when it comes to cookies (the toothsome antidote to espresso), Brooklyn’s Italian bakeries always showcase the generically-named “butter cookies” as well as biscotti, pignoli, sesame cookies, wedding cookies, amaretti and pizzelles.

What to look for in a perfect sandwich butter cookie? Freshness. The cookies should be light, golden and crisp but not crumbly. After a week, the jammy cement morphs into a dried gum, and can no longer hold the layers together, leading to major erosion on first bite. Just as important, I prefer a high sprinkle density and always eat the sandwich cookie starting from the undipped side, leaving the chocolatey end for last.

Other charmers from Royal Crown include fig-walnut and chocolate bread as well as pastries. Their sfogliatelle, the delicate, stratified pastry so sculptural and pristine, is one of the best in the city, but I prefer my sweets a little less diaphanous.

Royal Crown Bakery
6512 14th Avenue

Originally published on Until Monday: Brooklyn