Giant Jam Cookie: "Absolutely delicious!"

Photo by Rosa

Simply Delicious

I didn't think that Rosa had made this week's project, but then I remembered she told me she'd baked it earlier.  I was determined to track it down, and I finally found it on a blog post she wrote in April of 2015.  She used apricot lekvar instead of raspberry jam (in case you're wondering whether she might have used golden raspberries), and it turned out to be just as pretty as the one in the book.  She used several cookie cutters and carefully planned it so each slice had a cookie cutter cut-out and a cookie cutter cookie.  And it looks like she got every slice right.

Nicola didn't have any "natty cutouts" in a "quaint tiny size," so she improvised with an icing coupler for a "minimalist circle."  Of course, Nicola refers to this as a "giant jammy biscuit."  (Thanks to all you bakers who actually speak English, I remembered to request an oat biscuit instead of an oatmeal cookie in a shop in Ireland).  Making the giant biscuit was actually pretty uneventful for Nicola, although she almost burned the raspberry jam while joining her sons in an exciting episode of "How to Train Your Dragon," and the same boys all thought they should be able to eat the entire jammy biscuit before they settled for a mere wedge.

I hope that Nicola's boys don't read Katya's blog.  If they do, they'll discover that at least one person managed to eat the entire cookie by herself.  She meant to share, but forgot to invite her colleagues to tuck into the cookie.  Then she took it to give to her parents, but they're off sugar.  (There's a lot of that going around, isn't there?)  So really, what choice did she have?  And here are Katya's new year wishes to you:  "Make cookies.  Be alive.  Forgive.  Refuse to forgive....  Lie down.  Get up.  New Year.  L'Shanah Tovah.  May it be sweet.  And bitter.  And tough.  And new."

I suppose I should say at some point that, although some of the above bakers described this cookie as easy, there are others who were a little disgruntled by the time and effort it required.

Catherine, for example, titled her post, "Giant Pain-in-the-Neck Cookie."  Even though she acknowledged that the "biscuit dough is easy to whiz up in the food processor," and the end result is "delicious," she thought the rest of the recipe was, well, a giant pain in the neck.  It is not the recipe "for the impatient, intolerant and generally irritable baker."  From her blog, I'd describe Catherine as generally amiable rather than irritable, but apparently you don't want to be in the same kitchen with her if she's "inverting dough onto trays and then re-inverting on to other trays and so on."  Still, "it's a really great combination of flavours," and that's what counts, right?  Right?

Rachel, like several of the rest of us, was somewhat cowed by the description that said, in effect, "that making it look like the photo would require painstaking precision."  Then she decided to kiss precision goodbye and make "Rachel's version of Rose's Giant Jam Cookie, and everybody who eats it will enjoy it because let's be honest, even a crumbling disaster of a Rose recipe is delectable."  As it turned out, Rachel's version was not a "crumbling disaster."  It was quite nice.  She used a mixture of strawberry and cherry jams, which sounds quite yummy.  The worst thing that happened is that she got a little mixed up when she was making the cut-out pattern, so it looked a little more free-form than the picture in TBB.  But "it was really good."

When you look at Vicki's giant cookie, you'll notice a fairly heavy layer of powdered sugar.  This layer, Vicki says, "hides a multitude of sins."  And no cut outs, either; "this dough is lucky it made it into the pan."  On the other hand, "the flavor is lovely and the house smells heavenly."  Glad to hear that there are heavenly smells wafting from your kitchen again, Vicki.

Jen allowed as how the recipe was a bit "fiddly," but she made her cookie over the space of a few days, so she wasn't too bothered by the "shenanigans" required by the recipe.  Despite a few minor problems (the dough not fitting in the freezer, "mangling" the tiny gingerbread men, having to piece together some split-off dough), everyone enjoyed the final result (although Mark would have preferred blackberry jam).

Here's the takeaway on the giant jam cookie--nobody didn't like it!

Next week:  The Araxi Lemon Cream Tart.  This is the last of Rose's fabulous lemon desserts, and a recipe that Rose liked so much that she added it after all the recipes had already been chosen, so it must be good!

The countdown:  Just nine more recipes and we'll have completed the entire Baking Bible.