Jam Pillow Cookies

As my first cookie night turn of the year I chose to make light & delicious jam filled treat: Jam Pillows.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup flour

1/3 cup butter

1/3 cup sour cream

2 tsp grated lemon zest

1/4 cup jam (I used Strawberry and Blueberry jams for variety)

1 egg

1 tbsp icing sugar

This is a very simple dessert to make, unfortunately the recipe will only yield about 16 servings, so you may want to double up. The first step in making the pillows is to combine the flour, butter, sour cream, and lemon zest. This will create a crumbly dough when you should form into a disc, then wrap in plastic and leave in the fridge for 30 minutes to cool.

 Once the dough has had time to setup in the fridge, you can roll it out into sheets approximately 1/8 of an inch thick (~3mm). Using a pairing knife cut 2 1/2 inch squares from the dough (6 x 6 cm). Next place a 1/4 tsp of jam into the center of each square, then fold the dough to form a pillow (You can try rectangle or triangle shapes). Use a wet fork to press down the edges to contain the jam within the pastry.

 With all of the pillows filled with jam, now is the time to bast them with an egg wash (just whisk the egg and brush on). Heat the oven to 400 F (200C) and bake for about 12 minutes until golden brown. You may sprinkle some powered sugar on top of the freshly baked pillows.

I hope you enjoyed this treat, their not too sweet and pack a lot of flavour thanks to the jams.

Sweet abomination no! Their Windows cookies!!!

For a hardcore UNIX user like myself, these cookies were the hardest to make. Unlike their name sake however I've thoughtfully included the source ;)

Ingredients list:
Strawberry, Blueberry, and Lemon Jam.

3 1/2 cups flour.
1 1/3 cups cornmeal.
3/4 teaspoon salt.

2 1/4 cups unsalted butter.

1 1/2 cups sugar.
3 large eggs.
Green food colouring.

1 tsp Lime Juice.

Mix the cookie base of butter and sugar until completely combined. Then slowly add in eggs, flour, salt, and cornmeal. The cornmeal is the secret to this recipe, it provides the pastry with an unexpected flavour.

The dough is spread out on to a cookie sheet. To make removing the cookies from the pan easier you may place a sheet of parchment paper on the pan bottom, then apply butter. Keep aside 1 cup of dough. This will be used later on to create the window bars on the cookies. Bake the cookie base for 20 minutes at 350F, the top should be just becoming golden brown.

While your waiting for the cookie base to bake you can prepare the jam toppings. I used store bought jams, to make these easier to spread I used a table spoon to break up any large chunks of berries. To create the Green jam for the Windows symbol I took aside 1 cup of the lemon jam/spread and mixed in Lime juice and several drops of green colouring.

With the cookie base ready I take a paring knife and score the basic flag shape. This will make it easier to perform the final cuts later on.

Take a spoon, and great patience, I start the process of spooning a small quantity of jam into the proper colour positions for the symbol. Once this is complete I take my saved dough and place it into a piping bag. Using the piping bag draw the window frame around the jam and perimeter of the cookie. Once done, place the cookies into the oven for another 20 minutes at 350F.

When the cookies are done you may use a paring knife to carefully carve out your cookies from the pan.

Hope you enjoyed this cookie! :)