Clementine butter cookies
Clementine butter cookies with raspberry, apricot, and grape jam are a great addition to your Christmas cookie box. Crispy, buttery, with a hint of delicate clementine citrus flavor these cookies, are a must for your Christmas cookie box. Dust some icing sugar or sandwich them with your favorite jam.
Calories:
Equipment & Tools
- Food processor
- Kitchen scale
- Baking sheet 3x
- Parchment paper 3x
- Plastic wrap or a reusable zip-lock bag
- Rolling Pin
- Cookie cutters
- Chopsticks, plain takeout ones (optional), about 4mm (0.16in) thick
- Cookie spatula (very thin one)
INGREDIENTS
Cookie dough
- 300 g all-purpose flour (sifted)
- 90 g powdered sugar
- ¼ tsp salt (Himalayan)
- 7 g clementine zest (organic, about 3 clementines)
- 205 g butter (unsalted, cold, cubed)
- 1½ tsp vanilla extract (pure)
- 3 tsp whole milk (cold)
Other
- raspberry, apricot, grape, blueberry lemon thyme jam (homemade)
- powdered sugar
INSTRUCTIONS
- Gather all the ingredients.
Prepare the dough
- Mix vanilla extract with the milk. Set aside.
- Add the flour, sugar, salt, and clementine zest to a food processor. Pulse so that all the ingredients and the clementine zest is evenly incorporated into the flour mix.
- Add the cold butter cubes and pulse until the mixture resembles small grains. There should not be any chunks of butter visible.
- Add the milk and the vanilla mixture and process until the dough starts to form.
- Transfer the dough onto a clean working surface. Shape the dough into a disk of about 1½in thick. Place the dough into a zip-lock bag and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. (Note 1)
Rolling the dough & cutting out cookies
- Preheat the oven to 175ºC (350ºF).
- Take the dough from the fridge and let it sit on the kitchen counter for about 15 minutes. (Note 2)
- Lightly dust the kitchen counter and the dough with flour. Roll the dough from the center outwards. (Note 3)When you have reduced the thickness of the dough by a half, place one chopstick on each side of the dough (left and right). Roll the dough until the rolling pin reaches the chopsticks and can not go further. The final rolled out dough should be about 4mm (0.16in)thick. (Note 4)
- Cut out the cookies using your desired shape.Using a cookie spatula, carefully transfer the cookie onto a baking sheet. Make sure to leave around 1.5cm (½in) between the cookies.Refrigerate the cookies for at least 15 minutes before baking.
- Gather all the leftover dough and form a disc. Place in the zip-lock bag and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes.
- Repeat the process of rolling and cutting out the cookies until there is no more dough left. (Note 5)
Baking and serving
- Bake the cookies, one baking sheet at a time in the middle rack, for 12 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet halfway through the 12 minutes.
- Carefully transfer the baked cookies onto a cooling rack and let cool completely.
- Dust the cookies with powdered sugar, or make cookie sandwiches by adding a jam of your choice.
NOTES
- The dough needs to cool thoroughly so that the butter sets. Note that if the dough does not cool properly, rolling and especially cutting out the cookies will be extra difficult. Moreover, the shape of the cookies might be distorted since the butter in the dough is not set and hence not firm enough.
- The dough might be too hard to start rolling immediately after taking it out from the fridge and as a result, it might break.
- Apply a small amount of pressure when rolling the dough. Too much pressure and the dough will break. In the beginning, it will seem as if the dough is too hard to roll, but as you continue it will get easier. Fluff the dough and add additional flour, if needed, so that it does not stick to the kitchen counter.
- Using the chopsticks ensures that the dough is rolled evenly.
- For a normal size baking sheet, the process repeats 3 times.
* Nutritional information is only an estimate. The accuracy of the nutritional information for any recipe on this site is not guaranteed.