Thanks to a lack of time and frequent requests for specific biscuits and cookies I tend to make the same recipes over and again rather than experimenting with new ones, but for my sister's birthday I thought I'd try something a little different. I say a little because technically its basis is one of my tried and tested recipes, but I thought it may be time to give it a twist...and behold, my take on the humble jammy dodger.
I used this recipe for the shortbread dough (leaving out the chocolate) but made the following alterations:
1. Roll the dough out to be half as thick as usual - i.e. 0.5cm - since the biscuits are stacked in pairs.
2. Cut out whole circles of all the same size and place them on the baking trays, and then once they are on the trays use a smaller cutter to cut the holes in half of the batch. If you try to do this before you move them onto the trays the biscuits will stretch out of shape. I used quite large cutters so the recipe only made a batch of 8 (once assembled) but the quantities can easily be doubled to make more.
3. Leave the biscuits to cool completely before very carefully sandwiching them together with about a teaspoon of jam per pair. I stress "very carefully" because I managed to break a couple of mine when I tried to do this. The trick is to gently sort of wiggle the top half onto the jam without pressing too heavily on the outsides of the biscuit with the hole in as this causes too much stress to the thinner parts and they just crack - once you get the knack it's a piece of cake though I promise! I used rasberry jam because that was what I had in the house, but any would do - though I do love the look of the deep red.
Et voila!
I was really thrilled with how they turned out, and they were very yummy too. All in all a rather good present.
Delilah x
