Apricot Danish Cookies

As far back as I can remember, and probably even before I was born, my mother used to make a ton (okay maybe not a ton but is sure was a lot) of cookies for the holiday season. Although they are all delicious, the apricot Danish cookies are by far mine and my husband's favorite. This holiday season, we traveled up to New England to my husband's home town for the new year and figured it would be a nice treat to bake some of these cookies while we were there for his friends and family. One batch turned into two batches, then three, then four, then five, and before we knew it… we made SIX batches! Thankfully, these are probably one of the easiest, from scratch, cookies you could possibly make… only 5 ingredients!! Although we always make these in our house for the holidays, you can certainly make them any time of the year because they are THAT GOOD! Also, in my house growing up, we only ever made them with apricot jam; however, while making them this past week, we ran out of apricot jam on the last batch and had to use strawberry jam! So not to worry, if you aren't much of a apricot lover like we are, you can try substituting with other flavored jams… just make sure they are thick!  Nothing tastes better than some homemade, from scratch cookies just out of the oven.  If you want to make your own little pieces of heaven, follow the recipe below!

To make a single batch (approx. 18 cookies) - 

You will need:

1 stick of butter
4 oz cream cheese
1 1/8 cup of flour
1 egg (beaten)
apricot jam (other other jam flavor if you wish)

To make:

Take out your butter and cream cheese from the refrigerator and let it warm to room temperature.  This is really, really important so make sure you leave it out long enough in advance or you will hate yourself later. When possible, use organic but i'll get into why in another post.

Anyway, back to the cookies… now is a good time to pre-heat your oven to 350F.  In a large mixing bowl, add the SOFTENED butter and cream cheese and mix together with either a stand or hand mixer.  You will probably be like "what the heck did she make me do?" because all of the cream cheese and butter will end up in the beaters. No big deal… this is what is supposed to happen… just take your spatula and push it out of the beaters, back into the bowl. Next pour in the flour and mix with your mixer… again, you are going to think you are doing something wrong, and if you are thinking this… you are definitely doing it right.  You should mix the flour into the cream cheese and butter for about 1 minute or until it looks popcorn-ish (it looks that way to me at least) like this.

Looks like popcorn right?? Ok now comes the messy part… forming this mess into a beautiful dough ball… mix it together with your hands like this.

It should look like this once fully formed - what a beauty!

Next you are going to cut the dough ball in half because it is easier to work with and roll it out on a well floured work surface to about 1/8"- 1/4" in thickness, trim the edges to form a large square, and then cut the dough to make 2" x 2" squares like this.

Now comes time for filling.  There is really no exact science here… put about a dime size-ish amount of jam in the center of the square. If your eye-ball measuring isn't so good, just adjust the amount of jam on each square like I did in the picture below. Once you add the jam you are going to turn the square so that it is in the shape of a diamond, and fold the two opposite corners to the center, one over the other, and press the seam down with the tip of a butter knife.. do not press too hard tough, just enough to seal the tip of the dough down!

Fill all of the squares and repeat the process, until all of the dough has been used. Place the cookies on a baking sheet and lightly brush, ONLY the seam, with the beaten egg.  This will make sure that the seam doesn't open when they are baking in the oven! Space them about 1" apart like this. 

Now, place them in the oven and cook for approximately 20 minutes or until the bottoms are a very light golden brown.

They are done when they look like this.

Now, remove them from the baking sheet with a spatula and place them on cooling racks until the are cooled completely… Trust me - biting into hot jam isn't a pleasant experience!

That's it.. your cookies are done and you can now enjoy these delicious, homemade, from scratch, cookies that take only about 35 minutes from start to finish. 

Enjoy!

- Danielle