• These vanilla biscuits filled with raspberry jam are your perfect holiday sweet fix.

    With buttery biscuit rounds gently sandwiched around a jewel-bright dollop of raspberry jam, and finished with a dusting of icing sugar, every bite taste like nostalgia and they’re charmingly simple.

    Whether you’re gifting homemade treats to loved ones or putting together a festive cookie plate for guests, these biscuits shine: they look delightful stacked in pretty tins, tied with ribbon, or arranged on a platter for tea or dessert. And when you’re hosting – there’s something irresistible about those sugar-dusted hearts peeking through the jam, inviting everyone to dig in and share.

    They’re more than just cookies  they’re little parcels of comfort, perfect for the season of giving!

    Vanilla biscuits filled with raspberry jam

    Serves: Makes 20
    Cooking Time: 1 hr

    Ingredients

    • 60g castor sugar
    • 40g icing sugar, sifted + extra,
    • to dust
    • 250g butter, softened
    • 10ml (2 tsp) vanilla essence
    • 400g cake flour, sifted
    • pinch salt
    • 150g raspberry jam

    Instructions

    1

    Preheat the oven to 180˚C. Line 2 large baking tins with baking paper. To make the biscuits, beat the castor and 40g icing sugars, the butter and vanilla essence together in a blender or with an electric mixer at high speed until light and fluffy, 5 minutes. Add the cake flour and salt and blitz at medium speed, a further 1 minute, until well incorporated. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate, at least 20 minutes.

    2

    Remove the dough from the fridge and roll it out between 2 sheets of baking paper to a thickness of 0,4cm. Cut the dough into 6cm-diameter discs using a cookie cutter. Split the biscuit discs into 2 batches and cut a 4cm heart shape from the centres of 1 batch. Place all of the biscuit discs in the prepared baking tins and chill in the fridge, 15 minutes.

    3

    Bake the biscuits, 10 minutes or until the edges start to brown. Allow to cool at room temperature. Dust the face side of the heart-out biscuits with icing sugar and dollop raspberry jam in the centre of the other half of the biscuit “sandwich” (on the flat side). Press a biscuit with jam onto a heart-out biscuit to close the sandwich, the dusted heart side facing up.

    ALSO SEE: Comforting jam roll

    Comforting jam roll

    Recipe and styling by Nomvuselelo Mncube

    Photograph by Dylan Swart

    Imka Webb
    Author

    Imka Webb is a freelance digital marketing expert and the digital editor of Food & Home Entertaining magazine.  www.imkawebb.com