Homemade Jammie Dodgers

Jammie Dodgers – Honestly, I have never heard of this particular brand of British biscuits, but I Googled them today, and apparently these are very famous!!

A friend of mine has twin girls who just turned 1!!! First milestone, and since I couldn’t make it to the birthday party, I asked him if I could bake something for the little girls.
His express instructions were: No cocoa, baking powder or artificial colors. Just the ‘No cocoa’ bit hit me hard, because I thought I could bake them a sumptuous chocolate cake. I mean, what kid doesn’t like chocolate?? Anyway, parental instruction, so couldn’t deny. And after looking around for a bit, I found this cute biscuit recipe in Sanjeev Kapoor’s ‘Simple Home Baking’, and it that satisfied all his criteria. I’m going to pack these and give it to him tomorrow. Hope the little girls like it!!

These were awfully easy, I baked them last night, and did the filling this morning. I ran out of jam midway, so for the rest I just used a full butter cream filling.  Personally, I like the ones with the jam filling, because the tangy taste cuts through the sweetness of the jam pretty well.

Homemade Jammie Dodgers  makes 16-20

To make these, you will be needing

– 2 cups all purpose flour
– 125 gms frozen butter, cut into cubes
– 1/4 cup + 1 tbsp caster sugar (If you don’t have caster sugar, jut blitz some sugar in the food processor)
– 1 egg, beaten
– 1 generous tbsp of vanilla extract

For the filling

– 50 gms butter, softened
– 1/2 cup + 4 heaped tsp icing sugar
– 4 – 5 tbsp strawberry jam

Method

– Sift the flour in a bowl
– Add the cold butter cubes into the flour and rub it into the flour using just your fingertips.
– When all the butter has been mixed with the flour, it’ll look like chunky breadcrumbs. At this point, add the sugar, egg and vanilla extract.  Knead into a dough.
– Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 15 minutes.
– Preheat oven to 180°C.
– Roll the dough between two sheets of baking paper till it’s about 1/4 inch thick.
– Using a round biscuit cutter, cut into rounds.  Re-roll the trimmings and cut. Repeat till you run out of dough.
– Separate the cut rounds into pairs, punching a smaller round into one of each pair.
– Bake for 12 minutes or until the biscuits look golden brown.
 – Cool on a wire rack

I didn’t waste the tiny punched holes. I baked these to snack on while I filled the biscuits in the morning.

To make the filling

– Beat the softened butter with the icing sugar till you get a fluffy mixture thick enough to be piped.
– Transfer the filling to a piping bag with a large nozzle.
– Pipe hollow rounds on the bases ( turn the bases upside-down)
– Fill with jam
– Place the top (the one with a hole in the center), positioning the hole directly over the jam filling.
-Press and twist, so the butter cream filling spreads to the sides and the jam rises to the top.
-Store in a clean, dry container.