Jammy Dodger hearts recipe

These shortbread-style biscuits are filled with sticky raspberry jam to make them extra tasty, kids and grown ups will love them! If you like, the biscuits can be sandwiched with butter cream or chocolate and hazelnut spread. You could also just dust them with icing sugar or drizzle them with icing or melted chocolate. Use a variety of different cutters, round cutters with a hole in the centre are used for traditional Jammie Dodger biscuits, or you could cut out eyes and a mouth to make smiley faces. Why not use lemon curd or blackberry jam to make a variety of flavours?

Ingredients

• 250g butter
• 250g caster sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 500g plain flour
• 4 tbsp raspberry jam

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas Mark 4. Place the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and beat well until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs and vanilla until smooth. Stir in the flour and mix to a firm dough with a wooden spoon.
2. Dust a work surface with flour and turn the dough out onto it. Knead gently with your hands until smooth then roll out the dough until it is about 3 mm thick. Using a heart shaped biscuit cutter, cut out about 20 hearts. Place 10 of them on a baking tray lined with baking parchment.
3. Using a smaller heart shaped cutter, cut a small heart out of the centre of the remaining biscuits. Place these on a second baking tray lined with baking parchment. Gather up the biscuit dough trimmings and re-roll to make a few more biscuits. 
4. Bake the biscuits for about 15 mins until pale golden. Remove from the oven and spread the whole biscuits with a little jam. Place the other biscuits on top and then return to the oven for 2-3 mins if liked for the jam to heat up and stick the biscuits together.