Little eyes cookies, filled with jam that are easy to make

Little eyes cookies, if you like homemade pastries, the formula of these shortbread cookies filled with jam it will look very familiar to you. The particularity of the Little eyes, also called lunettes, is that the cookies are taken two by two, superimposed in the form of a sandwich with jam in the middle. Its grace is that the upper part is die-cut so that the filling is visible.

They are very similar to linzer cookies, except that the ones we are dealing with today do not contain almonds. In addition, they are cut in the shape of a smooth circle, with the central hole quite wide, and hence their name: portholes, I suspect referring not to the animal’s organ, but to the circular windows of ships. They are also known as lunettes cookies (glasses in French).

For cut the dough, we will need two circular cutters, one about 5 cm in diameter and another smaller, enough so that when cutting the inside of the cookie we have a margin to cover with icing sugar. These cutters can be perfectly improvised with things we have at home: a small glass, the neck of a bottle… in my case I used a cookie cutter and a large pastry bag nozzle.

The most common filling is raspberry or strawberry jambut they can be filled with jam of other flavors, or any pastry cream such as chocolate ganache, dulce de leche, lemon curddiplomatic cream… the options are many and all very tasty.

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recipe information

- Preparation time: 40 minutes

- cooking time: 10 minutes

- total time: 50 minutes (plus 30 minutes of rest)

- rations: 4 (18-20 units)

- Category: cake shop

- type of cuisine: international

- Calories per serving (kcal):560

Ingredients for the Little eyes for 4 people

For the cookies:

- 150 g butter at room temperature

- 80g icing sugar

- 1 egg

- 1 Teaspoon vanilla extract

- 250 g of wheat flour

- 8 g chemical yeast

For the finish:

- Raspberry marmalade

- Icing sugar for dusting

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How to make portholes

We begin by making the cookie dough, beating 150 g of butter at room temperature with 80 g of icing sugar with a whisk, until creamy.

Whipped butter with sugar to make ox eyes

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Add 1 egg and 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence and continue beating for 5 more minutes.

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Sift 250 g of wheat flour, together with 8 g of chemical yeast, and add it to the bowl, mixing with the help of a spatula until everything is integrated, but without kneading.

Incorporating the flour into the oxeye dough

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We form a ball with the dough and flatten it. We wrap it in plastic film and refrigerate it for a minimum of 30 minutes.

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Once the rest time has passed, we turn on the oven at 180 ºC. Take the dough out of the fridge and roll it out on the counter with the help of a rolling pin, until you get a sheet of dough about half a centimeter thick. To facilitate this task, we recommend dividing it into two parts. If the dough sticks to the rolling pin, we lightly dust it with flour.

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Cut circles out of the dough and carefully transfer them to a baking tray lined with parchment paper.

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Once we have all the dough stretched and cut into circles, we count the total cookies and make a central hole in only half of them.

Making the central hole of the oxeye cookies

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Bake them at 180 ºC for 10 minutes, with heat above and below and at medium height, until the edges begin to brown. Let them cool down a bit before continuing.