Here’s a totally authentic Swiss recipe. It’s for Spitzbuebe, or in English “little rascals”, delectably crisp vanilla cookies sandwiched together with raspberry jam.
Whenever I visit Switzerland I make a point of having as many of these from as many konditoreis as possible. The recipe came from “SwissMum” Sylvie Marthaler. My Swiss German is shocking at best, but I still have enough to translate this recipe – reading Sylvie’s handwriting is another matter!
It all starts with a buttery dough made with egg white and sweetened with icing sugar and vanilla. Sylvie’s recipe calls for vanilla sugar, but vanilla essence works just fine.
It’s very soft, so after an hour in the fridge, its good to roll out and then you can get cracking with the cookie cutters!
Traditionally Swiss Spitzbeube have three small holes cut in the top cookie, to look like a cheeky child’s face. I’ve used a star cutter, but a small heart cutter makes the cookies look sooo gorgeous. You can use whatever shape cutter you fancy!
The cookies are baked until they are crisp…
Then sandwiched together with the best raspberry jam you can lay your hands on (Bonne Maman is always good)…
And finally dusted with icing sugar. So tempting!
You know you want to make these – so here’s how:
Spitzbeube (Raspberry Sandwich Cookies)
makes about 30 sandwiches (depending on the size of your cutter)
ingredients
250g butter (if you can get cultured butter this gives a great flavour!)
125g icing sugar
1 egg white
1 tsp vanilla
350g flour
pinch of salt
about 1/2 cup raspberry jam
extra icing sugar for dusting
mixing
Beat the butter, sugar and egg white together until well combined and smooth. Add the vanilla and blend. Add the flour and salt and blend until a soft dough forms. Gather the dough into a ball and flatten into a rectangle about an inch thick. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for about an hour until dough has firmed up.
Roll the dough out on a well floured surface until it is about 2mm thick. Cut rounds with a cookie cutter (mine was about 6cm wide). Place all the rounds on cookie sheets lined with bake paper. In the centre of half the rounds, cut out a star, heart, circles or other shape. Gather all the offcuts, roll out again and repeat the process until you run out of dough. Remember to make sure you have an equal number of tops and bottoms!
Bake each tray at 180 degrees Celsius for about 9 minutes or until the edges of the cookies turn slightly golden. Let cool on the trays. When cold, sandwich the cookies together with about a teaspoon of raspberry jam (spread it out to within a few millimetres of the edge of the cookie before popping the top on and pressing down gently.
Dust the sandwiched cookies with icing sugar.
Enjoy!xxx
