Jammie Dodgers

It was family tea time at ours on Sunday, and since I knew I'd be making a big birthday cake on the morning, and Saturday was full of plans, I hunted down some biscuit recipes that could be whizzed up in advance. This version of jammie dodgers is just little shortbread biscuits sandwiched together with jam; they only take 10 minutes to bake, and the most time-consuming bit is rolling and cookie-cutter-ing - really easy and ideal to do with kids. (Pictured above with Millionaire's Date Biscuits)

Here's how to do it:

55g butter
30g caster sugar
90g plain flour
few drops vanilla essence


Mix together the (softened) butter, sugar, and vanilla, then add the flour, bar one tablespoon.
If the dough is a little dry, add a few drops of water; if too soft, pop it in the fridge in clingfilm for a few minutes.

Spread the remaining flour on a board, then roll out the dough to about 2-3mm thick.

Cut out as many circles using a cookie cutter as poss, the exact number will depend on your cutter's size, just make sure you have an even number. The recipe made me 32 shapes.

Use a smaller cookie cutter (I used a flower-shaped one) to take out the centre of half of the cookies.
Put all the unbaked cookies in the freezer for 10 minutes (stops them spreading when cooking)

Transfer the full circle biscuits to one baking tray, and the holey ones to another.

Put both trays in an oven heated to 170c, and bake the shortbread until slightly golden around the edges – usually about 10 for holey cookies, and a few extra - around 13 minutes - for the solid ones.

But keep a close eye - you want yellowy / golden, rather than brown, which shows they're on the way to burning.

Take out the oven and allow to cool.

Next pair up the two kinds of shortbread, spread some jam on the solid half, stick them together and sprinkle with icing sugar.