Almond Jam Sandwich Cookies

Well, it is past the holiday season now and I have realized that the twelve days of cookies has not even been close to finished. But I thought I would add some of the recipes that I used for making cookies over the holidays. Sarah and I made these cookies the week before Christmas and they were very tasty and fairly easy to make. We did not store them well though, and they became soft since they were not put in the fridge.

These are very much like the typical thumbprint cookies but with a slight variation. For the jam we used both peach and raspberry but I enjoyed the raspberry much better.

Almond Jam Sandwich Cookies (found in "The Wheat-Free Cook")

1 cup blanched slivered almonds

1/4 cup cornstarch

8 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

1/3 cup sugar

1 large egg yolk

1/2 teaspoon almond extract (we didn't have any but used vanilla instead, it tasted fine)

1 cup brown rice flour

pinch of sea salt

1/2 cup any flavor jam

Preheat the oven to 400F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper

Combine the almonds and cornstarch in a food processor and grind to a fine meal. Set aside. Add the butter and sugar to the processor and blend until creamy. Add the egg yolk and almond extract and blend until smooth. Add rice four, salt, and almond mixture and process until a ball of dough is formed.

Put the dough onto a sheet of wax paper(the book says plastic wrap but we decided that may be too sticky). Roll half of the dough into 1/8 thick slab and cut out rounds, use something to cut out the middle of half of the rounds so it looks like a donut. Transfer to the baking sheet and make sure you have a donut for each full round. Cook for 10 minutes.

Put a teaspoon of jam on each full round and put a donut ring on top. Don't press too hard or the ring will crack.