Jam Butter Cookies are colorful treats that will delight your taste buds with their fruity flavors. These crunchy, melt in your mouth cookies have jam mixed into the dough for cookies that are both cookie jar and care package friendly. Cutout in daisy shapes, these are a sparkling, edible bouquet.
Why you'll love this recipe
Now that the weather is warming up, it is time for care package bakers to check weather forecasts before picking a recipe for shipping. The temperature where you are and where the box is going, as well as the length of time the package will be traveling, becomes essential information when it’s hot.
Heat causes melting. Now is a good time to skip chocolate coatings or icing, and switch to sprinkles or sparkling sugar.
Heat also impacts spoilage. Moist, sugary treats (like banana bread) will develop mold much faster under hot conditions. Heat can also cause the oils in nuts, seeds, and butter to spoil.
Even for short mailing times, melting and spoilage should be considered. For military care packages that travel to extreme temperatures of over 150° F in military mail vehicles and can take weeks to arrive, the ingredients used in hot weather baking are especially important.
These buttery cookies are great for shorter, domestic care package travel. There is nothing that will melt or get gooey and they are a sturdy cookie.
I am super cautious about ingredients for military care packages sent to the desert (Middle East, Pacific Rim, etc.). There many desert safe recipes on The Monday Box that were developed with precautions for extreme heat resistance in mind. Though Jam Butter Cookies would be wonderful in cool weather military care packages, I don’t recommend sending these in extreme heat.
To make these jam flavored treats travel worthy, I turned classic thumbprint cookies inside out. Instead of the typical butter cookie with a jam filled thumbprint on top, the jam is mixed into the dough.
I used blackberry, peach, and strawberry jam, because that is what I have in my refrigerator. Use whatever jam you have handy. These cookies are delicious in any flavor.
A tiny bit of extract or flavoring oil gives these cookies a fruity flavor boost. I use Lorianne flavoring because I find it closest to real fruit flavor.
Instructions
This is an overview of the instructions. The full instructions are in the recipe card below.
- Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside.
- With an electric mixer using the paddle attachment, cream butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla.
- Beat in the dry ingredients mixture to form a slightly sticky dough.
- To make three flavors of dough, divide the dough into 3 even portions.
- Remove 2 dough portions and leave one portion in the mixing bowl.
- Mix in the lightest colored jam (peach), 1 ½ tablespoons of flour, extract and coloring.
- Wrap the peach dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate.
- Repeat with the other two dough portions, making strawberry and blackberry dough.
- Roll out each dough portion to ¼” between two sheets of parchment paper.
- Leaving the 3 dough portions each sandwiched in parchment paper, slide onto a baking sheet and freeze for about 20 minutes.
- When ready to bake, remove one cookie dough portion from the freezer and leave the others frozen until you are ready to use them. Cut out cookies, press into decorating sugar, and place on a parchment lined baking sheet.
- Bake cookies in a preheated oven for 10 minutes at 350° F.
Storage
Store at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 1 week.
Baking tips
- These cookies are delicious with any flavor of jam. Use your favorite jam or whatever jam you have in the house. Big chunks of fruit should be avoided.
- In order to avoid having to clean the mixing bowl between each dough flavor, start with the lightest color of jam first when mixing the dough.
- If you don’t have an extract that is the same flavor as your jam, use a complimentary fruit flavor. For example, I didn’t have blackberry flavoring so I used blueberry flavor with my blackberry jam. You can use vanilla, but the fruit flavor of the cookie will be very mild.
- The dough is too soft to make cutout cookies without chilling the dough first. The dough should be chilled and firm enough so that you can cut out and transfer a cookie to the baking sheet with no sticking.
- Do not attempt to add more flour and skip the chilling. Additional flour will ruin the taste and texture of the cookies.
- I used the 2" cutter (second smallest) from a set of nested flower cookie cutters.
- If you don’t have flower cookie cutters, circles and squares make very pretty cookies as well.
Tips for gifting and shipping
- For local gifting or gift baskets, stack the cookies, alternating colors, inside a clear cellophane bag and tie the top with a ribbon or twist tie.
- For mailing in care packages, only use cellophane bags if the cookies are secure without movement in the bag. Otherwise, wrap 6-9 cookies, alternating colors, in plastic wrap. Stack the wrapped bundles in a freezer weight zip lock bag and press out as much air as possible before sealing.
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Jam Butter Cookies
Equipment
Ingredients
Base dough
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup unsalted butter room temperature
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk room temperature
- 1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
For 3 flavored dough portions
- 1 tablespoons all-purpose flour for each dough portion (4 ½ tablespoons total)
- 1 tablespoon each of peach, strawberry, blackberry jam
- ¼ teaspoon fruit flavor extract each peach, strawberry, blackberry
- food coloring peach, pink, purple
- Decorating sugar peach/orange, pink/red, purple
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350° F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl. Set aside.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and granulated sugar.
- Mix in the eggs and vanilla until combined. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl.
- Add the flour mixture and beat to combine. The dough may be a little sticky.
- Divide the dough into 3 portions. Leave 1 dough portion in the mixing bowl. Remove and set aside the other 2 dough portions.
- Add the peach jam ( the lightest colored jam), 1 ½ tablespoons of flour, fruit extract, and two drops of food coloring to the dough in the mixing bowl and mix to incorporate all of the ingredients.
- Scrape all of the peach dough onto a piece of plastic wrap. Wrap and refrigerate.
- Repeat with the other 2 dough portions, making strawberry and blackberry dough. There is no need to clean the mixing bowl between the different flavored doughs as long as you scrape the bowl well after each batch.
- Remove the dough from the fridge. Roll out each dough portion to ¼” between two sheets of parchment paper. Leaving the 3 dough portions each sandwiched with the parchment paper, slide them onto a baking sheet and freeze until firm (about 20 minutes).
- Pour about 2 tablespoons of each colored decorating sugar into separate shallow bowls.
- When ready to bake, remove the peach dough from the freezer and leave the other 2 portions frozen until you are ready to use them. Take off the top sheet of parchment and cut out cookies.
- Gently press the top of each cookie in peach colored decorating sugar before placing on a prepared baking sheet 1” apart.
- Reroll and cutout cookies to use up the dough, chilling the dough if necessary to firm.
- Repeat with the remaining two flavors of dough, dipping the strawberry cookies in pink sugar and the blackberry cookies in purple sugar.
- Bake the baking sheets one at a time for 10 minutes each or until the bottom edges of the cookies begin to turn golden.
- Remove from the oven and allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Store at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 1 week.
Notes
- These cookies are delicious with any flavor of jam. Use whatever jam you like or have in the house. Big chunks of fruit should be avoided.
- In order to avoid having to clean the mixing bowl between each dough flavor, start with the lightest color of jam first when mixing the dough.
- If you don’t have an extract that is the same flavor as your jam, use a complimentary fruit flavor. For example, I didn’t have blackberry flavoring so I used blueberry flavor with my blackberry jam. You can use vanilla, but the fruit flavor of the cookie will be very mild.
- The dough is too soft to make cutout cookies without chilling the dough first. The dough should be chilled and firm enough so that you can cut out and transfer a cookie to the baking sheet with no sticking.
- Do not attempt to add more flour and skip the chilling. Additional flour will ruin the taste and texture of the cookies.
- If you don’t have flower cookie cutters, circles and squares make very pretty cookies as well.
Nutrition
First Published: May 15, 2020. Last Updated: March10, 2022. Updated for additional information and better reader experience.
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