Blueberry and Peach Vanilla Bean Jammers: From the mind of the cookie genius, Dorie Greenspan, these jammers are buttery shortbread cookies topped with blueberry and peach vanilla bean jam with a crumble topping. And they’re SO DELICIOUS!
I seem to be a sucker for any recipe made with jam recently. Maybe it’s because this is my way of hanging on to the freshness of the summer’s fruits for a little while longer.
Or maybe it’s because I could eat this jam by the spoonful. Either way, when I came across this recipe for Dorie’s jammers recently, the urge to make it was unstoppable.
From just the somewhat silly name, you might not be able to guess that these jammers have the potential to be one of the best desserts you ever make. But they are. And they kind of came out of nowhere.
Or at least from somewhere in the depths of a deep sleep. A creation of Dorie Greenspan for her pop-up CookieBar in NYC, jammers are a middle-of-the-night brainstorm of Dorie’s which combines her sablé [shortbread-like] cookie recipe with jam and a streusel topping. All fairly innocuous-sounding on their own, yes?
But they make for a truly outstanding combination when pieced together! I liken them to an underground movement where they are catching on like wildfire but the creator (leader) hasn’t quite stepped out of the shadows yet.
And what I mean by that is that Dorie hasn’t published a recipe for these jammers yet; this particular recipe (aside from the sablés) is the brilliant Lottie + Doof version.
If you’ve noticed, I haven’t really called these blueberry and peach vanilla bean jammers anything yet. I’m not quite sure if they could be a cookie because quite frankly, they are monstrous, and a la Seinfeld, I ate them with a fork.
And because of the jam and streusel topping, they take on an almost crumble-type resemblance.
Put together, these blueberry and peach vanilla bean jammers are one hell of a dessert and would be perfect to serve to kids at a birthday party, adults at a dinner party, or at any kind of event you need to travel to since they are completely portable and will keep at room temperature for a few days.
The recipe below may seem a little daunting simply because of the length but it actually couldn’t be easier to put together.
The one thing you’ll want to make sure you have on hand before you start the recipe is either a whoopie pie pan or a set of ring molds. I used my English muffin rings but various-sized round cookie cutters will work also. Just be sure you use oven-safe rings and adjust the baking time for different-sized molds. If you don’t have any of those tools, use mini tart pans (removable bottoms would work best) or even a muffin pan.
While the original jammers at Dorie’s CookieBar include a lemony pear-pineapple preserve, I added some cinnamon to the sablé batter and topped them with a mixture of homemade blueberry jam (a delightful gift from a friend) and my peach vanilla bean jam. These blueberry and peach vanilla bean jammers are helping to hold on to summer for a little while longer but with the cooler weather in the early August mornings now upon us, I can almost feel fall knocking on the door. Not that I’m complaining.
Maybe it wants one of these jammers.
Dorie’s Blueberry and Peach Vanilla Bean Jammers
Yield: 10 to 12 very large cookies
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Cooling Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes
Blueberry and peach vanilla bean jammers are from the mind of the cookie genius, Dorie Greenspan. They are buttery shortbread cookies topped with blueberry and peach vanilla bean jam with a crumble topping. And oh my goodness, they're SO DELICIOUS!
Ingredients
For the sablé dough (barely adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours)
- 2 sticks (8 tbsp) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- ¼ cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted
- ¾ tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp salt, preferably fine sea salt
- 2 large egg yolks, at room temperature
- ½ tsp pure vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
For the brown sugar streusel topping
- 3 tbsp unsalted butter
- ½ cup all-purpose flour
- ¼ cup lightly packed brown sugar
- 1 tbsp granulated sugar
- ¼ tsp fine sea salt or Kosher salt
- ⅛ tsp ground cinnamon
For assembly:
- 1 recipe sablé dough
- 1 recipe streusel topping
- ½ - ¾ cup of your favorite jam - I mixed together equal parts blueberry jam and peach vanilla bean jam
Instructions
- To make the sablé dough: Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter at medium speed until smooth and very creamy. Add the sugars, cinnamon, and salt and beat until well blended, about 1 minute. The mixture should be smooth and velvety, not fluffy and airy. Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in 2 of the egg yolks and vanilla, again beating until the mixture is hom*ogeneous. ⅛
- Turn off the mixer. Pour in the flour, drape a kitchen towel over the stand mixer to protect yourself and the counter from flying flour and pulse the mixer at low speed about 5 times, a second or two each time. Take a peek - if there is still a lot of flour on the surface of the dough, pulse a couple more times; if not, remove the towel. Continuing at low speed, mix for about 30 seconds more, just until the flour disappears into the dough and the dough looks uniformly moist. (If most of the flour is incorporated but you’ve still got some in the bottom of the bowl, use a rubber spatula to work the rest of the flour into the dough.) The dough will not clean the sides of the bowl, nor will it come together in a ball - and it shouldn’t. You want to work the dough as little as possible. What you’re aiming for is a soft, moist, clumpy (rather than smooth) dough. Pinch it, and it will feel a little like Play-Doh.
- To make the streusel topping: Melt butter in a small saucepan on stove or in microwave. Add the rest of the ingredients all at once and stir with a fork to form crumbs. You should have a kind of wet sand texture with pea-sized crumbs throughout the mixture. Cover and set aside until ready to use. The crumbs will harden a little as the cool but that's fine.
- To assemble and bake: Preheat the oven to 350° F.
- Ring Mold Method: Line a half sheet pan with parchment paper. Roll dough to just shy of ½-inch thick. Use 3-inch round rings to stamp out cookies (I ended up getting 9 cookies using this method. You could take the scraps and press them into extra molds). Transfer the dough and rings to prepared baking sheet. Chill in the fridge or freezer for 10-15 minutes until the dough firms up a bit (while the dough chills, you can make the streusel). Top the chilled dough with a couple of teaspoons of jam and a sprinkling of the streusel.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 18-22 minutes (my large molds took about 25 minutes), or until golden and delicious looking. Remove from oven and let cool 15 minutes before removing the rings. Allow to cool completely before serving.
- Whoopie Pie Pan Method: Fill each cup of the pan with a piece of dough and flatten with your fingers. The dough will be just slightly lower than the top of the pan. Chill in the fridge or freezer for 10-15 minutes until the dough firms up a bit (while the dough chills, you can make the streusel). Top the chilled dough with a couple of teaspoons of jam and a sprinkling of the streusel.
- Bake for 18-22 minutes, or until golden and delicious looking. Allow cookies to cool for 15-20 minutes in pan before using a small offset spatula to carefully ease them out of the pan and onto a cooling rack. If you can hold on to them, they will keep well for 2-3 days.
Notes
adapted from Lottie + Doof's version from Dorie Greenspan
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