Happy birthday to me! My office is full of February birthdays so we had a party/potluck on Monday this week. Of course, Sunday evening, I realized I hadn’t made anything yet and I was also way too tired and birthday-weekend-entitled-feeling to leave the house. I flipped through the dessert section of the Smitten Kitchen Every Day cook book and picked out the one thing for which I had all the ingredients sitting around already: Bakery-style butter cookies! Perhaps more descriptively titled: Amazingly Delicious Butter-Cookie Jam Sandwiches Dipped in Chocolate and Sprinkles or Whatever You Want!

These are so freaking festive and fun; I’ve been looking at them ever since the Smitten Kitchen’s first blog post about them. Initially, I was hesitant because they look so very fancy but they were surprisingly quick and surprisingly easy and painless. The dough was a snap to make but piping it out onto cookie sheets gave me a little trouble. I didn’t have a large enough piping tip so I used a plastic bag with the corner cut off – sadly, it was a super weak sandwich bag and as soon as I started pushing the cookie dough through (it’s the consistency of most cookie doughs) the corner I cut just kept expanding ’til the cookies were 4 inches wide! So, I scooped it all up and put it into a wilton piping bag and just cut the piping bag which worked great. I do think I’ll go even a little smaller next time – as I only wound up with 24 sandwiches (and one big weird one) rather than the 36 I was expecting.

For the big weird one: I had tried using a fork to rake the dough to give it the ridges she got from her star-shaped piping tip but it super didn’t work. So, I just dipped it in both sprinkles AND almonds and ate it right up. No complaints here 🙂

I loved arranging them on one of my new serving dishes (I hit World Market’s Black Friday sale pretty hard) and they definitely got oohs and ahhs from my co-workers when I brought them in. They were SO delicious. I wound up using raspberry preserves to stick them together (because that’s the only jam I had in the house) and I loved the taste. Next time though, it’d probably be best to go seedless. Also next time, I think I’ll make a double batch 😉

I snicked a tupperware from work after the potluck was over to bring a few cookies to my parents. How cute do they look in this talenti jar?! Damn cute! I’d definitely recommend these to anybody. They’re buttery, not too sweet, and the perfect amount of crunchy/melt-in-your-mouth. Make ’em!