These delicate Spanish-inspired almond cookies can be filled with dulce de leche, jam, chocolate ganache, lemon curd or icing. This recipe makes a lot, but they keep very well. Serve them with roasted plums or sliced peaches with peach ice cream.

Prep Time: 1 hour including chilling time

Cooking Time: 20 minutes

Ready In: 2 hours 20 minutes

¾ cup unsalted butter, softened

2 cups icing sugar

½ teaspoon lemon rind, grated

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

3 large eggs

3½ cups all-purpose flour (spooned into measuring cups and levelled off)

2½ cups ground almonds

1 teaspoon kosher salt

¾ cup dulce de leche

1 cup finely shredded coconut

Combine butter and icing sugar in a mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add lemon rind and vanilla and beat to combine. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well between additions. Add flour, ground almonds and salt and beat just until incorporated. Divide dough in half, wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes or until firm enough to work with.

Place one ball of dough on a lightly floured surface and roll out to about ¼ inch thick. Use a 1½-inch round cutter to cut out cookies and place about 1 inch apart on parchment-lined baking sheets. Repeat, gathering and re-rolling scraps until you have used up all the dough. Chill cut-out cookies for 20 minutes or until they are firm. You can do this ahead of time, wrap the sheets in plastic and bake them up to 1 week later.

Heat oven to 325 F.

Removing one baking sheet from fridge at a time, bake cookies for 16 to 20 minutes or until they are lightly golden at the edges. Transfer to a rack to cool fully. Spread the underside of half of the cookies with a heaping ½ teaspoon of dulce de leche, and top with another cookie to make a sandwich. Roll edge of cookie in coconut to coat. Makes 60 cookies