Makes about 3 dozen
Summer is gone, so I thought a nice way to end the season would be to make these jam tart cookies to highlight summer berries. I used strawberry jam for these, but they are really good with raspberry or blueberry, too.
The THING about sandwich-style cookies is that you really have to make a lot of the individual cookies (double, duh) if you want an impressive pile of treats. When baking on a large scale like I do, my concern is making sure each batch is consistent so that everything looks uniform when I match up pairs and mail everything out. To help with this, I find it is best to make the dough for all of my batches first and then mix all or part of the dough together before I chill in the fridge or begin baking. I get much better results with bake times and color/browning across batches.
It can be a lot of extra work, but well worth it for a cookie fiend like myself.
Enjoy!
INGREDIENTS
3 c all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 c (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 c granulated sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp milk
1 Tbsp lemon zest
2 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 c jam or preserves of choice
1 Tbsp lemon juice
DIRECTIONS
Combine the flour and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar at medium-high speed until light in color and fluffy (about 3 minutes).
Add the milk, lemon zest, and vanilla extract to the butter mixture and beat until combined.
Set the mixer to low speed and gradually add the flour until well blended.
Divide the dough in thirds and flatten into disks. Wrap each disk in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 350 F and line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
Roll the chilled dough to about 1/6" thick and use a 2" cookie cutter to cut into desired shapes. Use a smaller cookie cutter to cut "windows" in the center of half of your shapes. These will be the tops of the tarts while those without windows cutouts will be the bottoms.
Chill the cut dough shapes in the freezer for about 3-5 minutes, then space 1-2" apart on the prepared cookie sheets and bake for about 9 minutes until the bottom edges have barely begun to brown. The cookies may look slightly underdone.
Remove from the oven and cool on the cookie sheets at least 5 minutes before transferring to a rack to cool completely.
While the cookies cool, combine the jam and lemon juice in a small saucepan and heat on the stovetop over medium heat. Stir frequently to prevent burning and eliminate lumps. Bring to a simmer and then turn off the heat. Allow to cool completely.
When both the cookies and jam are fully cooled, spread 1/4 tsp of jam on a bottom cookie and top with one of the "windowed" cookies. Spoon a little extra jam (1/8 - 1/4 tsp) into the "window." Be careful not to overfill with jam or you will not be able to stack the cookies for storing. Keep in the refrigerator until ready to eat.
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