* This is the time to use your favorite, best-quality jam. If you have a homemade jam you love, then definitely use it here. For the past several years, I’ve been using Stonewall Kitchen’s Holiday Jam, a seasonal jam from one of my favorite New England–based food companies. Its festive flavors of cranberry, pear, raspberry, and orange are the perfect complement to these cookies. Stonewall Kitchen also makes a delightful Fig & Ginger jam that is also delicious here. And, if you really want to kick things up this holiday season and make friends for life, then sandwich some of the cookies with a high-quality, all-natural chocolate-hazelnut spread. It’s worth your while to seek out the good stuff here. My local Whole Foods Market carries the Rigoni di Asiago brand, which is smooth, creamy, and addictively decadent. (Rigoni di Asiago also makes a dairy-free chocolate-hazelnut spread, and their organic jams, sweetened with apple juice, are yummy too.) I excitedly purchased a chocolate-hazelnut spread with olive oil (!) at Eataly Boston a few weeks ago, which took the cookies to yet another level this year.
** Here are Celia Barbour’s brown-butter tips from the original recipe in Gourmet (December 2005), which I still find incredibly helpful to read every year when I make these cookies:
“Browning butter is not difficult…. Still, there is a way to do it right. First, the pot shouldn’t be too deep or too broad. If it is too deep, you cannot see through the bubbling butter to the bottom, where the browning takes place. If it is too broad, the butter cooks quickly, and you may wind up with milk solids stuck hard onto the pan. So for one stick, a small saucepan is fine. Four sticks, try a little stockpot.”
“Cut up cold butter and set it over moderate heat. When it is all golden liquid, start stirring as the butter begins to simmer. Next, a froth appears on the top; this soon gathers into little clouds, which then dissipates as the milk proteins separate from the fat, cook, and harden into tiny grains that fall to the bottom of the pan. There they’ll sit, turning brown—first pale caramel (beurre noisette), then tea-leaf (beurre noir), and finally, after about 10 seconds, black (garbage). I always leave the pan on the stove a few beats beyond rosy caramel to give a deeper flavor to the cookies.”
Recipe adapted from Gourmet, December 2005, and Martha Stewart Living, December 2012.