Little Rascals (Jam-Filled Sandwich Cookies)
These easy holiday treats from award-winning cookbook author Dorie Greenspan get their rich flavor from a combination of butter, sugar, and walnuts.
Little Rascals Sandwich Cookies
Photo Credit : Mark Weinberg; styling by Maggie Ruggiero (food) & Caroline Woodward (props)Essentially jam-filled sandwich cookies, these easy holiday treats from award-winning cookbook author Dorie Greenspan get their rich flavor from a combination of butter, sugar, and walnuts. She describes them as “a lot like Linzer cookies’ simpler cousins.”
From “The Sweet Life: Holiday Baking with Dorie Greenspan,” November/December 2019
Yield:
About 28 sandwich cookiesIngredients
2⁄3 cup (134 grams) granulated sugar
2⁄3 cup (80 grams) walnuts (whole or pieces)
¼ teaspoon table salt
Pinch of ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
1 ¼ cups (170 grams) all-purpose flour
1 stick (8 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg, lightly beaten
Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting
Thick jam, such as raspberry, strawberry, cherry, or apricot
Instructions
Put the sugar, walnuts, salt, cinnamon, and zest into a food processor and pulse just until the nuts are ground. Add the flour and process to incorporate. Scatter the butter over all and pulse until the mixture forms crumbs and resembles streusel. Add the egg a little at a time, pulsing as you go. Then pulse a few more times until you have a soft dough. Scrape the dough out onto a work surface, divide it into halves, and shape each into a disk.
Working with one disk at a time, roll it to ¼ inch thickness between sheets of parchment. Slide the dough, still sandwiched in paper, onto a baking sheet (you can stack the slabs) and freeze for at least 1 hour, although longer is better. This dough remains soft even when frozen, so it’s best to get it as cold as you can before cutting it.
Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 350°. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats. Have two cookie cutters at the ready: one 1½ inches in diameter (plain or scalloped) and the other a little less than 1 inch in diameter (plain, scalloped, or a bit fancy, like a star shape).
Take a slab of dough from the freezer and peel away the parchment. Working quickly, cut out as many 1½-inch rounds as you can, spacing them on the baking sheet 2 inches apart. Use the smaller cutter to remove the centers of half the cookies. If the dough breaks while you’re cutting out the centers, patch it; if the dough is really soft and you’re not having fun cutting it, slide the baking sheet into the freezer and give it a 10-minute chill. (Be sure to reserve the scraps, which you can combine with scraps from the second piece of dough, and shape into a disk, roll, freeze, cut, and bake.)
Bake for 14 to 16 minutes, rotating the sheet after 10 minutes or until the cookies are a pale golden brown. Transfer the sheet to a rack and allow to cool completely.
Repeat process with the remaining dough, always being sure to use a cool baking sheet.
To finish the cookies, dust the cutout ones with confectioners’ sugar. Turn the whole cookies over, bottoms up, and place about ½ teaspoon jam in the center of each. Top with the cutout cookies, pressing down lightly to push the jam toward the edges.
