Suvaroffs (Jam-filled Austrian shortbread)
From the time I could manage the oven by myself, two cookies were required for the Christmas-Hanukah-Birthday season to officially happen. One is the vanilla kipfelrn, the crescent-shaped nut-based cookie that is native to Austria. My father, also a native of Austria (untll Mr. Hitler and friends decided our kind was no longer welcome), would often request them instead of cake for his December 28th birthday.
The other regular was the Suvaroff, a sandwich cookie made with vanilla-scented shortbread and raspberry jam, that according to the Gourmet Old Vienna Cookbook of 1959, was also a popular old Austrian treat. It became my family’s, for sure.
They’re easy to make, just a wee bit fiddly and will take a couple of hours from start to finish, fewer if you have willing helpers.
A few notes:
These cookies are nice when fresh, but get better with age, as the jam melds with the cookie.
They’re super-delicate so not great for shipping; they are ok to freeze, which i am forced to do, else my family eats all of them before I have time to box them up as gifts.
I add lemon zest to the seedless raspberry jam, in honor of my father, who always felt American jam was too sweet. Even if you go for the fancy European stuff (or make your own, you know who you are!), a little bit of lemon zest seems to enhance the raspberry.
Sentimental note: I always toast upwards to wherever my parents have seemingly disappeared to before I eat the first of the season.
Do you have a cookie so wrapped it family memory you do something as loony as I do?
SUVAROFFS
Yield: About 7 dozen
What You Need:
1 1/2 cups (10 ounces/283 grams) unsalted butter, cut into cubes
3 cups (384 grams) all-purpose flour
2/3 cup (134 grams) granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Seedless raspberry jam
A pinch of lemon zest
Confectioner’s sugar (I store a vanilla bean in my sugar. You should too)
2 round cookie cutters, 2 to 2 1/2-inches in diameter. One cookie cutter should be ring shaped, so it will cut a small hole from the center of the dough. If you don’t have a cookie cutter like this, you can improvise with something like a toothpaste cap.
What You’ll Do:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Add a pinch of lemon zest to about 9 ounces of seedless raspberry jam. Stir and set aside.
Using a food processor/stand/hand mixer or your bruiser-like forearms and a wooden spoon, blend the butter and flour together until the mixture looks crumbly. Pour over the sugar, Pour the vanilla into the sugar and mix until a smooth dough forms.
On a well-floured pastry board, with a well-floured rolling pin, roll out a chunk of the dough until it’s 1/8-inch thick. This dough can get sticky, so make sure there is always a dusting of flour underneath the dough.
Cut an equal number of tops and bottoms out and place on a parchment-paper lined baking sheet. Repeat rolling and cutting out dough. Save all the scrap pieces and keep re-rolling them back into a dough ball.
Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes, rotating once up and down and back to front to ensure even baking. When the cookies are ever-so slightly yellow/gold and dry, remove them from the oven and let them cool a bit before moving them to a cooling rack.
Sandwich a cookie ring and round together with a heaping 1/4 teaspoon of jam. Blanket the cookies with confectioner’s sugar. Before serving, dust once more to freshen their look up a bit. No one wants a frowsty-looking cookie.
