Every now and then a recipe surprises me and this week’s Tuesdays with Dorrie assignment was one of those times. On first glance, this Hungarian Shortbread seemed pretty run-of-the-mill. Sugar, flour, jam, butter…..wait a minute, is that A WHOLE POUND of butter? OK, maybe this is going to be more exciting than I thought!
This recipe is essentially a shortbread dough stuffed with your choice of jam — the homemade rhubarb in the recipe looked delicious but that just wasn’t going to happen this week, so I turned to my pantry and used a mix of raspberry and apricot jams. What makes this recipe so interesting (and ultimately so delicious), is the technique of grating the cold dough to make the top layer of dough. I was concerned that this was going to be difficult (I had visions of sticky dough melting in my hands while I was trying to grate it on a box grater), but it was a breeze! So easy, in fact, that I think this recipe would be a great option for our cooking parties for young kids. I did decided to leave the dough overnight in the fridge and the next morning it was solid as…..a pound of cold butter…and that sure made it easy to grate. It ended up looking like lovely strands of fontina cheese on a pool of jam.
I used an 8×8 pan so that I would have a thicker end product and I used 2 cups of jam instead of the required 1 cup. Did I mention how much I love jam? I kind of saw this recipe as a vehicle for my favorite condiment until I tasted it at the end. It was moist and flavorful and the crumble topping was an amazing, light texture. And that final (heavy) dusting of powdered sugar really put it over the top.
Full recipe can be found at this week’s host: One Small Kitchen and The Not So Exciting Adventures of a Dabbler. We’ve been having so much fun cooking along with the Tuesdays with Dorrie gang…it’s been like a at-home course in baking and every couple weeks we learn something new. Next up: Pecan Sticky Buns…..can’t wait to get my hands on that yeast dough!
The Simple Gourmet Kitchen 