austrian raspberry shortbread
If there is anything I am always on the prowl for–besides artichokes, cookie cutters and green anything–it is variations on classic recipes. It’s a sticky thing, of course, because the originals earned their prized state for being blissful the way they are. But I can’t help it–I see a twist, a curve, a departure, or in this case, once again, a grater and I can’t resist.
In my mind, there are few cookie combinations as satisfying as a butter cookie with raspberry, and whether you make them into bars, sandwiches or thumbprints.
But all varieties have a certain density that attracts shortbread-junkies like me, but repels those who want a less weighty cookie experience. This recipe magically ingratiates itself to both parties with the help of a food processor.
Get this: you grate half the cookie dough into a fluffy pillow of shortbread threads, spread raspberry jam over the whole layer of bedding and then blanket the second half of gratings over the jam. Resist all urges to pat them down–and trust me, it will be tempting–because the heat of the oven will weld the bits together into a cohesive, solid shortbread cookie bar which manages to remain airier than the traditional variety.
I brought them to a party a couple weeks ago, along with the peanut butter cookies, chocolate pretzel cookies and the world-famous World Peace Cookies and they stole the show. I didn’t know that anything could put World Peace in a corner–certainly not Austria–but there they were, nya-nya-ing their cookie tin competitors. I beamed with baker pride.
Smitten Kitchen Went to Aruba and All I Got Were These Lousy Cookies! Deb and Alex have flown the snowy, slushy and biting cold coop this week for warm, sandy island shores and countless tubes of SPF 50, so comment responses are going to be slow until they return. In our absence, we leave you with a Week of Cookies–this is recipe three of four.
The Menu for Hope Campaign continues through Dec. 24, which means that you still have a chance to win a box of home baked cookies (such as these!) from the Smitten Kitchen, or one of hundreds of other prizes donated by food bloggers around the world, delivered to your doorstep. You receive one raffle ticket for a prize of your choice for each $10 donation. I’ve explained everything in detail over here.
One year ago: Robert Linxe’s Chocolate Tart/Tarte au Chocolat and Marzipan
Lydia’s Austrian Raspberry Shortbread
Adapted from Butter Sugar Flour Eggs by Gale Gand, Rick Tramanto and Julia Moskin via Epicurious, which explains the cookie’s back story
I made several adaptations to the original recipe. The first was that although the shortbread is wonderful plain, it is it, indeed, plain. I think a little lemon zest, a splash of vanilla or even both would work deliciously in the dough, and against the raspberry. The suggested baking time is almost half of what I needed to get them solidified and lightly golden in the oven–mine took an hour, in the end, and I do not suggest you take them out before they truly look done. Finally, I knew immediately that raspberry jam could not be spread over a pile of cookie shards, and plopped it into a piping bag with a big tip instead. A zip-lock bag with a 1/2-inch corner cut off would work as well. If your jam is particularly thick, you might want to heat it briefly to liquefy it slightly, though my seedless variety didn’t require this. Finally, with this especially (but also, all bar cookie and brownies), I find that they’re much easier to make clean cuts in when thoroughly chilled in the fridge.
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
Optional additions: 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1 teaspoon lemon zest
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 and 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 2 hours or overnight (or as long as a month, if you like).
Heat the oven to 350 degrees.
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 9×13-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 a piping bag with a wide tip or a zip-lock bag with the corner cut off, squeeze the jam over the surface as evenly as possible, 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.
Bake until lightly golden brown and the center no longer wiggles, 50 to 60 minutes. As soon as the shortbread comes out of the oven, dust with confectioners’ sugar.
Cool on a wire rack, then cut in the pan with a serrated knife. I find that for this an all bar cookies, chilling the pan in the fridge makes it a lot easier to get clean cuts.
How clever! I love this idea, and have a jar of raspberry jam sitting in the cupboard just waiting to be used…
Ooh, these sound awesome! And I have a bunch of my mom’s homemade raspberry jam I can use.
OMG These were sooooo good. Out of all the cookies you brought to my x-mas party, these were the best. The peanut butter ones were my second favorite. Damn it! I want one right now!
I know the feeling, we make the same batch of Christmas cookies every year. They’re great, but I’d love to experiment. I think I may have to coerce my brother into letting us try this recipe this year, they look delicious! I have to say though, one of my personal favorites is Neiman Marcus Cookies, like chewy drop chocolate chip cookies with oatmeal and nuts. Yummmm.
oooh yumyumyum!!! I am very excited to try this.
Although I’m still disappointed that I can’t get the world peace cookies to work : ( they just crumble into bits for me
P.S., to Jen: I’m obsessed with the Neiman Marcus cookies myself…
I have never thought to grate dough! I bet those are so light and buttery!
Okay, I had *just* decided I was Done (capital D intentional) with Christmas baking, due to having far too many cookies around, even after throwing a party and giving away three gigantic plates of them, and sending another big plate to work with my husband.
But! These sound so awesome that I will be making a half-batch tonight!
These look fabulous…..and now I am wishing that I had enough time in my busy holiday baking schedule to squeeze in one more item. *sigh* I did make your espresso chocolate shortbread cookies last night, Deb - with the suggested chocolate toffee chips - and they are AMAZING! My husband and co-workers are thanking you right now!
These are pretty and look like they would taste fantastic with a cup of coffee. Yum. I can’t make anymore cookies this season, though. I’m getting out of hand at this point. :-)
Completely random and off topic… Sorry, but I need HELP from one of my favorite food bloggers.
I need a recipe for fudge. It’s my father’s favorite thing, but I can’t seem to get it right. Mine always comes out all grainy and nasty, and I want to make him some.
Bonus points if I can include walnuts…
Hi Deb, thanks for all the great cookie recipes! I’m pretending that the impending holidays are over, thinking ahead to our trip to Aruba in February, and hoping that you will give us a good trip report after you get back!!
I feel like baking everything you posted, only me and my family don’t need to eat it! I really need to make a party — a dessert party and bake all these fancy fun recipes! Then I can have boxes at the ready to give at the end of the night to all my guests! I REALLY WANT TO MAKE A PARTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I made something just like this only slightly fussier from a recipe in Gourmet magazine a few years ago. The difference was that instead of a whole crust top, you would roll out the top and then cut shapes to float over the jam layer. They showed stars of different sizes floating for a July 4th picnic, but I think it would be lovely for Valentine’s Day with hearts, too.
Yours is faster and I think probably a little less messy to pick up and eat, though.
This sounds delicious to a raspberry lover. Can’t wait to try them. Know what else you might like if you like these? A recipe from Food & Wine a few years back for a cookie that looks almost identical to this except that the dough is made with ground almonds. The recipe give you the buttery goodness of shortbread plus some lightness — all with the added bonus of the toasty almond flavor to complement the whole raspberries. YUM.
The mail-order cookie company I used to work for made these exact bars in raspberry and apricot flavors - grating the shortbread made quick work for lots of bars- and the dough holds FANTASTIC in the freezer for months. BTW Jessica - my favorite fudge can be found on the jar of FLUFF! Its delicious, though on the sweeter side, and never grainy, and you can go hogwild with the nuts. You can find the recipe at Fluff’s website and substitute Kraft marshmallow creme, which is more widely available around the country.
I’ve made a recipe similar to this several times, only this version is made with a home made rhubarb jam. I think it’s a Martha Stewart recipe from years ago. I love the idea of the grated shortbread. It’s such a fun way to make these bars and the results are so unexpected. I may have to try them again with raspberry jam.
Admittedly the only time I’ve ever made fudge, but it was good and not grainy at all. Cook’s Illustrated recipe with condensed milk (halfway down the page)
http://oughttobeworking.blogspot.com/2007/01/salt-induced-coma.html
I’m going to have to try that Fluff thing…
amazing!!! what a great idea. LOVE LOVE LOVE the picture of the powdered sugar getting sprinkled!!!!!!
Very interesting and different recipe - and like i said, NOT HELPING me avoid all the holiday treats :)
These look absolutely WONDERFUL.
These look awesome! I am totally intrigued by the grating idea. I have done that with tart crusts before and it worked great. I’ll bet it makes a really crumbly shortbread. I can’t wait to try it.
This is one of my favorite recipes from this book. I recently made these with mango jam.
I never left a comment here, but I follow you every day, admiring your creations. These shortbreads look super!! happy xmas!
OK, I have made them, I have tasted them, I have seen Heaven.
These are GOOOOOOD, folks. Really good. And, actually, very simple and easy to make. (Although I did worry that running our food processor at 10:30p last night might wake our neighbors’ little girl. But they are worth it!)
Delicious, delicious, Deb. Thank you!
I’ve been wanting to try this recipe for years! How did you use the food processor? Did you use the grating blade for the frozen dough?
Are you back yet? Where’s Natalee Holloway??
I am totally making these tonight - originally,the plan had been to make mini loaves of banana bread and pumpkin bread to be wrapped up and given to friends, but the breads have just been preempted - it’s going to be these and the peanut butter! Yum!
These look really good. Raspberry sounds like it would go really well with shortbread.
These look delicious…I love the clean taste of shortbread with preserves!
Casalea–since Deb’s living it up in Aruba, I thought I’d let you know that yes–I used the grating blade for the frozen dough. My dough had been in the freezer over 12 hours at that point, though, and I’m new to food processing, so I let it relax a bit on the counter before putting it through the processor. Just don’t let it relax too long or it won’t be hard enough to grate! :)
I made these last night! I did a 1/2 & 1/2 putting raspberry on one side and apricot on the other. I used sugar free jam - which didn’t seem make any difference in the finished product. NOTES: I only had to freeze the dough for 2 hours like Deb suggested. I used a greater and it worked well, although at my 5′ 2″ with-shoes-on stature I had to use a foot stool to get enough leverage to get the work done. When I do this again I will line the pan with parchment paper with a few inches left over on each side - this will allow me to pull out the cookies & transfer them to a cutting board for cleaner cuts. It took me 50 minutes in a convection oven. THESE ARE AWESOME!
Oh…. YUUM this is a wonderful sounding one…….
This may be my most favorite recipe of all time - they were so good!
Jessica — Sorry! I haven’t made it before, but I hope to, soon, so I will be hoping for suggestions from other commenters as well! … And: thank you Rachael!
Casalea — Yes, I used the grating blade and the food processor made short work of the frozen dough. It was entirely undaunted by how hard the dough got. If you are hand-grating, it might be best not to freeze it, just refrigerate it, and to do it in smaller batches because inevitably, the part in your hand will get soft and difficult to grate. In addition, there will be a piece at the end that will be impossible to grate without taking your fingertips with you (the hand grating, this is) and you can either tear this into the tiniest bits possible or cool it again and try to chop it. Good luck!
These are wonderful! The shortbread melts in your mouth. I got frisky and added some raspberry chipotle sauce into the jam. It gave it a nice flavor with just a hint
of heat.
I have been making this recipe for years; it’s in the Baking with Julia cookbook and there they are called Hungarian shortbread. I don’t bother grating the dough anymore. I just pat it in the pan, put the jam over it, and put dollops of the rest of the dough on the top. Pretty and delicious. I use all flavors of jam. Just depends on what’s available in the house.
Great cookies! I made these in a tart pan.They are crisp and melt in your mouth. mmmmmm
I just made these last night and they turned out lovely! I don’t believe 1 cup of jam is quite enough, though. I wasn’t able to get the jam over the entire layer of dough.
I had a tiny jar of lemon curd lying around so I used a little of that. But there was STILL space left, so I found some apricot/orange jam from SaraBeth. All three flavors are tasty and the lighter shortbread is a treat.
Made them last night and they were delicious! They were a little too sugary for me, even without the powdered sugar, but that’s obviously a matter of personal preference. I also agree with Deidre that more than 1 cup of jam was probably needed.
Still, with three people in the house, I only have a half-batch left less than 24 hours later. Will definitely make these again!
loved, loved, loved these bars–i’ve made them twice to rave reviews. but here is a question…why would you shape the dough into “discs” instead of “logs?” it was much easier to feed the logs through my food processor than breaking off pieces of the disc. any comment?
My co-workers are currently thanking you for enabling my baking obsession. These are totally delicious.
Made these last month for a reception and they were incredible…however, I did destroy my food processor….the first log I sent through the chute grated fine, but while doing the subsequent logs (which i had frozen overnight the central post of the processor melted, and I grated the rest by hand. Next time (with the new Cuisinart) I will either do the two-hour thing, or let them soften a bit. I needed way more jam to spread an even coat…used the whole jar, and then I overbaked them and ended up scraping off some of the bottom layer….but even those disasters couldn’t ruin this recipe…they were a hit!