Dorie Greenspan Gives Holiday Baking Advice

Dorie Greenspan, James Beard Award-winning cookbook author and cookie expert, joins us to talk holiday cookie baking and take listener calls. One of her most recent cookbooks is Dorie's Cookies

Excerpted from DORIE’S COOKIES © 2016 by Dorie Greenspan Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Rux Martin Books. All rights reserved. 

Little Rascals 

When I discovered that the German name for these cookies, which I grew up with, translated as “Little Rascals,” it made me love them even more. Not that their proper name, Spitzbuben, didn’t also sound comical to my American ears, but Little Rascals was irresistible. Happily, the cookie is as irresistible as its name. Essentially jam-filled sandwich cookies, these are made with walnuts and very little flavoring: a pinch of cinnamon, if you’d like; a scrape of lemon zest, if that’s your fancy. Mostly the flavor is butter, sugar and nuts. The texture is best described as crumbly and a little gritty (in the best way). Half the cookies, which are always made small and often made for Christmas, are baked whole and the other half are given peek-a-boo cutouts. When the cookies are cool, they’re sandwiched with a tiny bit of jam that pushes up alluringly through the cutout. They seem a lot like linzer cookies’ simpler cousins, don’t they? And wouldn’t they be great for Valentine’s Day if you used heart-shaped cutters? 

A word on the jam filling: If you’d like, you can bring the jam to a boil (I do this in the microwave), let it cool and then spoon it onto the cookies—boiling will thicken the jam and make it less sticky. But using jam straight from the jar is fine too. 

Makes about 28 sandwiches  

2/3 cup (134 grams) sugar 

2/3 cup (80 grams) walnuts (whole or pieces) 

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt 

Pinch of ground cinnamon (optional) 

A little freshly grated lemon zest (optional) 

1 1/4 cups (170 grams) all-purpose flour 

1 stick (8 tablespoons; 4 ounces; 113 grams) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces 

1 large egg, lightly beaten 

Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting 

Thick jam, such as raspberry, strawberry, cherry or apricot 

Put the sugar, walnuts, salt, and cinnamon and zest, if you’re using them, in a food processor and pulse until the nuts are ground. It’s better to have a few discernible pieces of nuts than nut butter, so keep an eye on the mix as you go. Add the flour and process to incorporate. Scatter over the pieces of butter and pulse until the mixture forms crumbs and resembles streusel. Add the egg a little at a time, pulsing after each bit goes in. Pulse a few more times, until you have a soft dough. 

Scrape the dough out onto a work surface, divide it in half and shape each into a disk. 

Working with one piece of dough at a time, roll the dough 1/4 inch thick between sheets of parchment. Slide the dough, still sandwiched between the paper, onto a baking sheet—you can stack the slabs—and freeze for at least 1 hour; longer is better. This dough remains soft even when frozen, so it’s best to get it as cold as you can before cutting it. 

When you’re ready to bake, center a rack in the oven and preheat it to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Have two cookie cutters at the ready: one 1 1/2 inches in diameter and the other a little less than 1 inch (the cutters can be plain or scallop-edged). 

Pull out one piece of dough; keep the other in the freezer. Peel away both sheets of parchment and return the dough to one sheet. Working quickly, cut out as many 1 1/2- inch rounds as you can, placing them on the baking sheet a scant 2 inches apart. Use the smaller cutter to remove the centers of half of the cookies. If the dough breaks while you’re cutting out the centers, patch it; if the dough is really soft and you’re not having fun cutting it, slide the baking sheet into the freezer and give it a 10-minute chill. Reserve the scraps, then combine the scraps from the second piece of dough, shape into a disk, roll, freeze, cut and bake. 

Bake the cookies for 14 to 16 minutes, rotating the sheet after 10 minutes, or until pale golden brown. Transfer the baking sheet to a rack and allow the cookies to cool completely. 

Repeat with the remaining dough, always using a cool baking sheet. 

To finish the cookies, dust the cut-out cookies with confectioners’ sugar. Turn the whole cookies over, bottoms up, and place about 1/2 teaspoon of jam in the center of each one. Top with the cut-out cookies, pressing down lightly to push the jam toward the edges. 

Storing 

Wrapped airtight, the dough can be frozen for up to 2 months; cut and bake directly from the freezer, adding another minute or two to the baking time if needed. Covered, the cookies will be fine at room temperature for up to 2 days. They’ll get a little softer because of the jam, but they’ll still be nice.