More Cookies!

The orange cookies in the previous post were delicious and the recipe is a new one from King Arthur Baking, but sometimes I find recipes in old magazines or in cookbooks that have sat on the shelf for a while. Today's cookies are from just such a book, butter, sugar, flour eggs by Gale Gand from 1999.  I love bar cookies because they usually go together quickly and don't require a lot of fussy decorating. This one is fun because you make the shortbread style dough, freeze it, and then grate it to create the bottom and top crusts. In the middle is a layer of raspberry jam, although I suspect that you could use any flavor and it would still be wonderful. I tried to grate the dough on a box grater, but found that using the large hole disc on my food processor worked just as well and went far more quickly. Frozen dough requires a lot of muscle power to grate on a manual grater!

I used the plain version of this dough, but you can also sub in some cocoa powder for some of the flour to have a chocolate-raspberry combo. Do try this one...so easy and so delicious! You probably have all of the ingredients on hand already.

Austrian Raspberry Shortbread Cookies
From butter sugar flour eggs, by Gale Gand, Rick Tramonto and Julia Moskin, 1999

This rich, ladylike cookie goes well with tea, particularly a flowery tea like rose hip.

1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, slightly softened
4 egg yolks
2 cups granulated sugar
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup raspberry jam, at room temperature
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar

Cream the butter in a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment (or using a hand mixer) until soft and fluffy. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

Mix the granulated sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt together. Add to the butter/egg yolk mixture and mix just until incorporated and the dough starts to come together. Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and form into two balls.

Wrap each ball in plastic wrap and freeze at least two (2) hours or overnight (or as long as a month for later baking).

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Remove one ball of dough from the freezer and coarsely grate it by hand or with the grating disk in a food processor into the bottom of a 9 x 13-inch baking pan or a 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Make sure the surface is covered evenly with shreds of dough.

With the back of a spoon, or a flexible spatula, spread the jam over the surface, to within 1/2-inch of the edge all the way around.

Remove the remaining dough from the freezer and coarsely grate it over the entire surface. (If using the food processor, grate the first ball of frozen dough and spread that over the bottom, spread the jam,  then grate the second ball of frozen dough and spread that shredded dough evenly over the jam, all the way to the pan edges.)

Bake until light golden brown, 30 to 40 minutes. As soon as the shortbread comes out of the oven, dust with the confectioners' sugar.

Cool in the pan on a wire rack, then cut into bars with a serrated knife.

I lined the pan with parchment, leaving an overhang on two ends to help removed the baked and cooled cookies from the pan, then used a long, serrated bread knife to cut the cookies into squares.

NOTE:
To make this a chocolate shortbread cookie, substitute 1 cup cocoa for 1 cup of the flour.