Fancy Cookie Platter!

all the cookies are filled with apricot jam, and the ones with the green tips were then dipped in more apricot jam then rolled in finely ground pistachios!

hi Claudia!

Thank you! these are easy to bake and very easy to decorate beautifully! I'm sure yours can be even more pretty.

The measurements are in cups because my aunt really eyeballs all the ingredients I had to watch her many times and really get a feel for the dough before I figured out the basic quantities. 

ingredients:

3 cups well sifted all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 cups butter or ghee (ghee makes richer more buttery tasting cookie, butter makes a lighter cookie. If using ghee, place in a bowl and stick in the freezer for about twenty minutes. If using butter, keep at firm room temp.)

1 cup powdered sugar sifted 

2 eggs

2 tbsp vanilla extract or 1/8tsp vanillin powder (we use vanillin)

pinch of salt

---

Whip the butter/ghee while adding sugar slowly until fluffy and almost doubled in volume. Beat in the eggs, vanilla, and salt. Stop mixing and gently fold in the flour sifted with the baking powder. The dough will be a little crumbly then come together. Try to work in a cool environment to prevent the fat in the dough from melting and falling apart. Our way of decorating these is placing half the dough in a piping bag fitted with a star tip and piping 3inch long sticks onto a baking sheet (you don't gotta grease it, these don't stick, but I put down parchment to make cleaning easier). The rest of the dough is chilled then rolled out to 1/4in thickness (or your preferred thickness these don't expand to much so what you shape is more or less what you get)  and cut into circles. Use a smaller cookie cutter or piping tip to make smaller holes in the center of half the original circles. Distribute across baking sheets as needed, then bake in a 365F oven for about 12 minutes or until the edges begin to look golden and crisp. My aunt liked to keep them just barely browned, which is what I do also. My dad likes them a bit darker so it comes down to preference. Let the cookies cool down on the cookie sheet before handing. To decorate the star shaped sticks, I place a teaspoon of apricot jam on the bottom flat side of one cookie, then stick another one on top, gently pressing them together. Then dip half of that into a bowl of warmed jam, and roll in ground pistachio. When these sit for a day or so, the pistachio melts into the jam and creates an amazing texture. For the other cookies, take one circle and place a dollop of jam in the center and press another cookie with the holed out center on top.

good luck!