Austrian Raspberry Shortbread
Austrian Raspberry Shortbread
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen’s “Austrian Raspberry Shortbread”
1 lb unsalted butter, softened
4 egg yolks
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 jar (13 oz) Bonne Maman’s Raspberry Preserves
Powdered Sugar
Cream the butter in a large bowl and mix in the egg yolks. Beat in the vanilla extract. Add the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt and then mix until the dough comes together in large clumps.
Divide the dough in half by weight. (REVISED 8/11/2019: shape each half of dough into two rectangles, for a total of (4) blocks. Wrap and label the blocks that came from each “half” for when you grate the dough later. Press down on the dough until the thickness is such that you will be able to feed pieces of it into your food processor. See images in Notes.) Freeze the blocks of dough for at least two hours.
Microwave the fruit preserves until they are slightly runny. Use a sieve to remove the seeds from the preserves. Discard the seeds and pour the raspberry preserves into a zip-top bag.
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Using the large grating attachment on your food processor, grate half of the dough and pour it into a 9” x 13” pan lined with parchment paper. Spread the dough evenly in the pan but do not apply pressure or push the dough into the pan.
Snip a corner off of the zip-top bag of preserves and drizzle the preserves over the dough, avoiding a ½” edge around the edge of the pan.
Grate the rest of the dough and evenly spread it over the pan.
Bake for roughly 50 minutes, or until lightly golden brown. REVISED 8/11/2019: If using a metal pan, bake cookies for about 25 minutes at 350F, then reduce heat to 325F and bake until done.
Cool thoroughly before dusting surface with powdered sugar. Life the shortbread out of the pan using the parchment paper edges. Cut short bread into squares and serve.
In this photo I have pre-cut pieces of dough before freezing them. However I spent too much time wrapping each cut piece and this resulted in a waste of wax paper and freezer bags.
Notes
Use four egg yolks when making this recipe. I have tried substituting the egg yolks with two whole eggs, but the dough will be a bit paler in comparison once it is baked and the texture doesn’t quite feel the same.
It is extra work to remove the seeds from the preserves, but it is worth it. Removing the seeds from the raspberry preserves will leave you with slightly under one cup of preserves. I really like Bonne Maman fruit preserves.
I no longer have a glass pan so I had to bake the shortbread in a metal pan. Using a glass pan is easier because you can see how brown the shortbread is turning on its edges. I was concerned about under-baking the center of the shortbread, but since I could not tell how dark the edges were getting in my metal pan the shortbread was over-baked at the edges. (REVISED 8/11/2019: If using a metal pan, bake cookies for about 25 minutes at 350F, then reduce heat to 325F and bake until done. The edges will not over-bake as before.)
Revised 8/11/2019: Dough is easy to cut this way and reduces plastic wrap waste.
Use a large bowl and sieve to remove the seeds from the raspberry preserves very quickly. You will have larger tools to wash, but this will save so much time.
