Christmas Cookies with Raspberry Jam

To cook a German cuisine recipe Christmas cookies with raspberry jam, sift the flour into a deep bowl. Grate the butter or cut into a small cube and mix, or rather, grind with flour into small crumbs. Do not bore yourself and try to grind the oil into a uniform crumb, even if there are any errors, this is not bad.

Next, add the yolks of three eggs, sugar, grated lemon zest and vanilla sugar to the butter and flour. Mix well until smooth. Grind walnuts in a mortar, as small as possible, if there is no mortar, you can grind in a coffee grinder. Add the nuts to the dough and mix the nuts well in it.

Collect the dough in a lump, wrap with cling film and place in the refrigerator for 2 hours. During this time, the dough will cool, cease to be too soft, and it will be easier to work with. In general, it is advisable to knead the shortbread dough as quickly as possible, although when the butter in the dough begins to melt strongly, it is more evenly distributed and helps the remaining ingredients to be better and more evenly distributed.

After time, remove the dough from the refrigerator and roll into a thin layer. To better roll out the dough without sticking to the surface and the rolling pin, since the surface does not sprinkle with flour, parchment paper can be used. Lay the paper on the surface, lay the dough on it and lightly add, cover the dough with a sheet of paper on top. Now the shortbread dough will be easy to roll.

The dough is well rolled out, and now stars need to be cut from it. Using a star-shaped recess, cut out cookies from the dough. The remaining dough can be collected in a ball, rolled out and cut again, and so on – to the last bite.

Count the number of Christmas cookies cut out and divide in half – that is, if it turns out 40, then divide it into heaps of twenty pieces. In twenty stars you need to make a hole – it should not be large, but it should not be small. The hole can be made a recess, if there is no recess of such a diameter – show your imagination, you can use nozzles for a confectionery syringe, or, for example, a cap from lipstick.

Turn on the oven and preheat it to 200°C (390°F), while the oven is warming up, cover the baking sheet with baking paper. Put stars from the shortcrust pastry on a baking sheet. When the oven warms up, place cookies in it and bake for 10-15 minutes. Cookies should not be too fried, it should turn out to be slightly ruddy in color.

Remove the finished cookies from the oven and transfer to a wire rack for cooling, and then connect in the form of a Christmas tree. Raspberry jam will help to connect the stars. Grease an asterisk without a hole with jam, sprinkle asterisks with holes with powdered sugar. Now you need to connect the stars, and using a teaspoon or coffee spoon, fill the hole with jam. Everything – Christmas cookies is ready, you can put it on a plate or slide and decorate with spruce branches or tinsel.