Giant Jam Cookie

Fussy, fiddly, putsy, finicky, exacting--choose your favorite adjective indicating you're going to be in the kitchen for longer than it usually takes to make a cookie.  But most of the time is spent putting the cookie top and bottom in the refrigerator or freezer and taking them out again.  I got nearly 2,000 steps going from the kitchen to the basement (where my freezer is) and back!

The dough itself is easy enough to make in the food processor--just Demarara sugar, butter, flour, eggs, and salt.  They come together to make a nice, soft dough.  This is going to be easy, I thought.

You'd think I'd know by now that, at least for me, when a dough has been in the refrigerator for an hour or so, it's going to take a lot longer than five minutes for it to get back to the malleable stage again.  But I'll spare you the description of how the dough tore apart.  I eventually got it into a circular shape big enough to trace the shape of a 12-inch lid.

A pizza cutter works much better than a knife when you're trying to make a circle.

A few patching jobs here and there, and some wrinkles from the plastic wrap, but it's serviceable.

I ran out of raspberry jam, but I dug around in the refrigerator and found another half-full jar, so I didn't have use jam with seeds.  You should do the jam part first--you have to boil down the jam, and then let it cool to room temperature.  If you let it cool while you're running back and forth from freezer to countertop, it should be done about the time you're ready for it.  (That's if you don't elect to make the dough a couple of days before you bake the cookie).

I thought I was being very careful not to cut all the way through the dough, but, as I found it when I tried to slide the top layer over the jam, I wasn't careful enough.

The heart shapes came out in the cookie cutter, so I didn't bother to freeze them separately.  I just took the top layer down to the freezer and let it freeze solid.  This is a very important step!

Spreading the jam on the bottom layer and brushing the edge with water--super easy step!  I was getting too sure of myself.

Because even though the top layer was frozen solid, it started to thaw in about 10 seconds.  It came apart at the edges and at some of the wedge markings.  I pieced it back in one piece as well as I could and poked some holes in the dough.

I forgot to set the timer, but fortunately I didn't leave the kitchen, so I smelled it when the dough started to brown.

This is just the kind of cookie I like--tart fruit, crispy and buttery cookie.  Jim liked them too, although, to be honest, Liz and JJ only took a few bites.  Lily ate more, but not with the same gusto she displayed when she ate a chocolate ice cream sandwich.  I think this mega-cookie would be fun to bake for a crowd because who expects one cookie to serve 12 people.

Too tart for a four-year-old?