The people at King Arthur Flour are baking geniuses. Who else but a genius would come up with delicious buttery shortbread filled with raspberry jam?
This recipe comes from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, my new favorite book. While the preparation does take a bit of time, the end result is totally worth it. You could use any jam with this, and I look forward to making other batches with apricot and strawberry in the future. The recipe below yields two 8-inch rounds of shortbread, so you could use one flavor of jam in one round and a different flavor in the other if you like. When I originally baked this last weekend, I made one round with jam and the other with almond paste; both were tasty, but the jam version was my favorite.
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter, slightly softened
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 10 ounces flour (about 2 1/3 cups; I used a food scale to measure mine)
- 6 tablespoons raspberry jam*
*If you’re making one round with raspberry and the other round with a different type of jam or with almond paste, you only need 3 tablespoons of jam.
Preparation
Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
In a mixing bowl, cream together butter, sugar, salt, and vanilla, then beat in flour.
Divide dough into four pieces, about 6 ounces each (I’d recommend 5.7 or 5.8 ounces each to divide as evenly as possible).
Place an 8-inch round cake pan upside down on your counter top and cover with plastic wrap. Press one portion of dough onto the plastic wrap, covering the bottom of the pan completely – you’ll need to be careful, as the dough can tear as it stretches. Wrap the circle of dough in the plastic wrap and refrigerate while repeating this step with each remaining portion.
Lightly grease two 8-inch round cake pans; remove dough circles from the fridge. Peel plastic wrap off the first circle of dough and press into the bottom of one cake pan; top with jam, leaving about 1/2 inch bare border around the edges. Top with another circle of dough and gently press the edges to seal them. Prick all over with a fork all the way through each layer. Repeat with the third and fourth circles of dough in the other pan.
Bake for 45 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from oven and loosen the sides with a knife, then cool in pans for 10 minutes.
Carefully turn the shortbread out onto two cutting boards and allow to cool for 5 minutes, then cut into wedges. I cut mine into 16 wedges each for slimmer slices.
Makes 32 wedges.
amy bakes in the 'burgh 