It's Sunday: Time for Cookies! Ukrainian Plum Butter/ Kumquat Thumbprint! 🌞

[justaprogressive]

*Plum Butter Cookies Recipe {Pesochnoe Pirozhnoe}




Having lived in the US for 16 years now, there are not many things that I am nostalgic about when it comes to my home country of Ukraine. Since most of my adult memories were made here, there’s not much I remember to begin with, but there are still a few things that I miss.

These cookies, which were called Pisochnye Pirozhnue (translates as – shortbread pastries) are on that short list of things I miss for sure.Back home they looked a little different because they had just a tiny tiny smidgen of the filling and whenever you ate it you really wished there was more.

The plum butter gives the cookie a little bit of tartness, which is nice because the cookie itself is sweet. The white cream filling is there to soften the cookie and bring it together with the filling.

At first, when you fill the cookie it has a thick layer of frosting in the middle, but in a day at least half of it gets absorbed by the cookie, making it soft while still adding flavor to the overall thing. So, this cookie should be made a day, or even a couple days ahead and not on the day of.

Plum Butter Cookies (Pesochnoe Pirozhnoe)

Yield: two full 12in x18 in tray of cookies,
Or 90 small 2 inch cookies
or about 50 medium 3 inch cookies

Shortbread Cookie Ingredients:

egg yolks
egg
sugar
sour cream
baking soda + vinegar
butter, room temperature
Crisco Shortening – Butter Flavor or butter room temperature (find it in the baking section of your store)
flour

Cream Cheese Buttercream:

butter, unsalted, room temperature
cream cheese, room temperature
heavy cream (at least 33% fat content)
vanilla extract

Powdered Sugar Glaze:

lemon juice or milk
powdered sugar
cocoa powder

Also:

Plum butter (search your local Russian stores or Amazon for it).

How to make the Plum Butter Cookies:

Preheat oven to 350 F with the rack in the middle.
Combine baking soda with vinegar in a cup and stir until the foam subsides.

Cream together 1/2 cup butter with 1 cup Crisco shortening and 1 cup sugar for about 1 minute with a mixer. Add 1/2 cup of sour cream, 2 egg yolks, 1 egg and the baking soda+vinegar mixture and mix until combined. Now add 3 cups sifted flour and mix until it comes together.

Once the flour is mixed in, add one more cup and mix it in by hand. Split the dough into 4 equal pieces and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
Shape and Bake the cookies:

The dough comes out pretty crumbly, so we will need to use special techniques to keep the cookies from sticking to the rolling pin, or falling apart, or losing shape as you transfer them from the rolling surface to the baking sheet.

To do this, you will need two large pieces of parchment paper. Now put them inside your jelly roll baking sheet and bend the sides. This will mark how far you need to roll out the dough.

Now remove the sheets and place the dough in the middle of the first sheet. Flatten it into a disk.

Top it with one more piece of parchment paper and roll the dough thinly making it the shape of the inside of the baking sheet, trying to stay within the marked lines. The parchment paper keeps the rolling pin from sticking to the dough.
How to roll out dough for plum butter cookies on parchment paper with a rolling pin.
Use a cookie cutter to cut out round cookie shapes leaving only about 1/8 of an inch between each cookie. The cookies don’t expand much, so they will be ok.
Now carefully remove the dough excess around the cutouts. Transfer the parchment with the cutouts to the baking sheet.

If you would like to have holes in the top cookies, use a smaller round object to cut out the hole in the middle of each cookie. As you bake, make sure you get equal quantities of both the bases and the tops with the holes in the middle.

How cut out holes in the top cookies using a smaller round object and bake until golden.
Bake in the middle rack for about 7 minutes, or until golden in color, watch them closely as they burn very quickly. Remove from the oven, peel cookies off the parchment paper and allow to cool. Use the parchment paper again to roll out the remaining dough and bake the rest of the cookies.
Shortbread cookie shells in a baking sheet.

Make the Cream Cheese Buttercream:

Whip 2 sticks butter and 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract for about 5 minutes or until very white/pale in color and increased in volume.
How to prepare the buttercream filling for these plum butter cookies.
Now cut the cream cheese into smaller pieces and add them into the whipped butter a couple cubes at a time, minimally whipping after each addition.
How to make a sweet buttercream filling for these amazing shortbread cookies.
Separately whip the heavy cream, then carefully fold it into whipped butter and cream cheese mixture. Do not overfold, as the mixture separates easily. If the mixture does start to separate, take a couple spoons of buttercream and microwave it in 5 seconds increments, about 2 or 3 times, then fold it back into the rest of the buttercream.

Do so, until the cream comes together. With heating the buttercream, you’re just trying to bring it to room temperature, and not make it melt.

Rich buttercream for filling these simple shortbread cookies.
Now fill two pastry bags with a 1/4 inch round tip each. Fill one bag with cream cheese buttercream and the other one with plum butter. Plum butter is easier to push through the pastry bag if it is first warmed up.

You can also use just a plain butter knife and a spoon to spread cream cheese buttercream and plum butter on each half of the cookie, but it does take longer than using a pastry bag. Now push two halves with two different fillings together.

How to prepare these easy plum butter cookies.
Make the glaze and apply to cookies:

Now stir the lemon juice and powdered sugar together until smooth. Take away couple tablespoons of the glaze and add 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder to it, then stir again until smooth; cover with plastic wrap.
Either use a teaspoon to spread a little bit of glaze on top of the cookie or dip the top slightly into the glaze then scrape excess against the edge of the bowl.

How to decorate shortbread cookies with a simple icing and filled with plum butter and buttercream.

Now fill a ziplock bag with the cocoa glaze and put a couple lines across lined up cookies in one direction, and then a couple lines in the opposite direction.
Allow the tops to harden.

How to top plum butter cookies with chocolate drizzle,

Then, transfer cookies to an airtight container and refrigerate for at least 24 hours before consuming.

https://letthebakingbegin.com/plum-butter-cookies-pesochnoe-pirozhnoe/


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*Too Challenging? Try This!



Thumbprint Cookies with Kumquat



I like to keep a little bit of sweet treats around for teatime as well as for gifting. This simple recipe is quick to make and comes together easily with staple ingredients from the pantry. My current favorite version uses the Kumquats in Cognac but it’s a versatile recipe that I can adapt to fruit as well as chocolate cookies. Our Cancale blend with fleur de sel, fennel, and orange is a perfect finishing touch!

Ingredients

½ cup butter, softened to room temperature
½ cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp syrup from the kumquat jar
1 ¾ cup all-purpose flour
½ tsp baking powder
Pinch of fine sea salt
- 1 jar Kumquats in Cognac, large pieces cut in half
1 tsp Cancale blend


Directions

Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Mix in the egg, vanilla, and kumquat syrup.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, and fine sea salt together and stir into the wet ingredients until just combined.

Onto a parchment paper lined baking tray, roll a packed tablespoon of cookie dough to a smooth ball. Press a well into the center of the dough, using the thumb, and place a piece of kumquat into each well. Continue rolling, shaping, and filling each cookie until they are all shaped and filled.

Finish each filled cookie with a sprinkling of Cancale and bake for 12-15 minutes (rotating the tray halfway through baking) or until cooked through and barely golden brown on the edges.

Remove the tray from the oven and allow the cookies to rest on the tray for 15 minutes. Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack and allow to cool completely before serving. The cookies are even better the next day!

https://www.laboiteny.com/blogs/recipes/thumbprint-cookies-with-kumquat


Satisfy your sweet tooth with these stone fruit treats!

[niyad]

1. Thank you for the recipes.

The author suggested ruzzzian stores, and amazon. . .seriously? Fortunately, my local European markets all carry Lekvar (plum butter).

[justaprogressive]

3. Yes I noted that..

normally I rec another source, but search limited by a pinched nerve in my neck...

[niyad]

5. Completely understand.

[mike_c]

2. those look so good!

I read the OP as "time for cocktails," then thought that looks unnecessarily complicated. Just give me the booze in a glass and hold the plum butter and kumquat, lol!

[justaprogressive]

4. you want something to drink?

Try these: https://www.democraticunderground.com/1157151782

[Cairycat]

6. I love plum butter (lekvar)

and those cookies look sensational. But, it's really good in peanut butter sandwiches, the tartness of the plum butter goes well with the nutty flavor of the peanuts.

[justaprogressive]

7. That I didn't know.

My wife would like love that combination!