How to make the delicious French crispy shortbread cookies with raspberry jam

Level: Intermediate
Total time: 1h25

The daily meals in France are breakfast, lunch (usually hot), “Gouter” or afternoon snack and dinner. The dinner is quite late, often around 8 pm which is why the kids have a snack around 4 pm. It is very different from the Norwegian culture where sweets are usually for special occasions or Saturday evenings only. France is however not among the bad students on European obesity and diabetes statistics and I have learned to adjust to this cultural difference. The kids have such long days in school here and they move so much that they definitely need to eat something in the afternoon. To the extent I have time I try to make homemade snacks or alternate with fruits instead of biscuits. These crispy shortbread cookies with raspberry Jam are on the list of our favorite snacks!

THE TIPS TO SUCCEED

1: It is best to make the dough the day before or at least 1 hours before you use it in order for the dough to set and to be less sticky

2: Adjust your sugar level in the raspberry jam depending on the quality of your raspberries. The cookies are sweet already so you can allow your jam to be less so.

Let’s get started

Ingredients

Shortbread cookies

• 180 g Flour
• 25 g Potato Starch
• 25 g Almond poudre
• 100 g Icing Sugar
• 1 pinch Salt
• 1 pinch Baking powder
• 100 g Butter
• 3 pcs Egg yolk Small or medium egg
• 1 ts Vanilla extract

Raspberry jam

• 200 g Raspberry Frozen or fresh
• 130 g Sugar
• ½ pcs Lemon

How to do it

Shortbread cookies

Start by adding flour, potato starch, almond powder, icing sugar, salt and baking powder in a bowl. Then add the butter in small pieces and crumble it in using your hands. Scrub it between your hands until you get a texture similar to semolina. Mix the egg yolks and the vanilla extract with a fork and add it to the dough using your hands

Put the dough on the table and use a silicon pastry scraper to press the dough towards the table, little by little. Do this twice through the dough. This makes sure that the butter is fully mixed with the rest of the ingredients and does not leave any lumps.

Cover the dough in plastic and let it rest in the fridge for min 1 hour, but preferably overnight.

The next day start by heating the oven to 180°c. Roll out the dough between 2 baking paper sheets until it is 3mm thick. When you cut out the cookies you can use any shape or form you like, but make sure to add a hole in the middle of every other cookie.

Cook on a baking paper covered or buttered plate for approx 15-20 minutes.

Raspberry Jam

Squeeze the juice of ½ lemon and add it together with the raspberry, and sugar to a sauce pan. Bring to boil and let it simmer for 10-15 minutes.

Filter the jam through a sieve to remove the seeds and put in the fridge to cool down.

The cookie

Put one cookie shape without hole upside down. Then add a small ts of jam in the middle and place a cookie with hole upside up on top and squeeze lightly together.

How to serve the shortbread cookies with raspberry jam

Simply serve the shortbread cookies with raspberry jam with some icing sugar sprinkled on top as a snack or with a coffee.