Jelly Jumbles
It has taken me forever to make Jelly Jumbles because I couldn’t find currant jelly in any grocery store. I finally found it in a local health food store, snatched it up and made the cookies!
I was surprised every step of the way while making Jelly Jumbles. The recipe has several steps and require some patience. In the end, the time and effort needed to make Jelly Jumbles is well worth it because you will have an almost flakey sandwich cookie with a sweet currant filling. Perfect for entertaining during the fall holidays!
If you’ve followed my blog, you know that I’ve rated most of the recipes in Cookies by Bess 2-stars for cookie baking difficulty. Jelly Jumbles is one of the rare 3-star recipes. The dough is very fragile and therefore was a bit difficult to manage when cutting the cookies. Because of this, you may need some additional baking time.
I started as normal by pulling my ingredients together. One adjustment I had to make was to use oat milk for the sour milk. This was because that’s all I had in my refrigerator. 😊 I’m wondering if the oat milk caused the fragileness of the dough. I don’t think so, but I do suggest using cows milk to make the sour milk just in case.
By the way, sour milk is made by adding a tablespoon or vinegar or lemon juice to a cup of milk. For this recipe, I added a teaspoon to the 1/3 cup milk per the recipe.
It was quick and easy to mix the ingredients together. In hindsight, I should have added a bit more flour as the dough seemed a bit wet or sticky for rolling.
I didn’t add the extra flour, as I was hoping chilling the dough in the refrigerator would help firm it up a bit and make it easier for rolling.
To chill the dough, I covered it with wax paper and plastic wrap. The recipe says to chill the dough for several hours. I actually ended up chilling the dough over night because the dough didn’t seem to firm up enough for rolling.
After splitting the dough in half, I pulled a small amount to begin rolling.
Even after chilling the dough overnight, the consistency was still a bit wet and sticky. Rolling the dough required using a lot of extra flour. The consistency of the dough made it somewhat difficult to roll the dough and I had to re-roll it a few times as the dough stuck to the wax paper and some of the cut cookies broke apart as I was moving them to the cookie sheets. I keep wondering if adding a bit more flour when mixing would have made a difference. Either way, make sure to have a good amount of flour available when rolling out the dough.
After cutting the first layer for the cookies…
I opened my jar of currant jelly.
And placed about ½ teaspoon in the center of each cookie round.
Next, I rolled out the top layer. I didn’t have a thimble available, so I had to think of a different way to cut the holes in the cookie. The idea of using a slim pen came to mind. It seemed to work okay!
I carefully placed the cookie on top of the jelly.
And patted the edged together with my fingers.
Next, I pressed the fork tines around the edges and I was ready to bake.
Much to my surprise, I the cookies puffed up while baking!
The recipe instructions says to “Watch carefully”, which I definitely did! I figured the thin and fragile dough would bake up pretty quickly!
The recipe doesn’t mention greasing the cookie sheets, so I didn’t. It worked best to remove the cookies from the cookie sheet quickly once out of the oven.
The cookies turned out great! The holes in the top layer of the cookie allow the jelly to peak out a bit and the fragile dough ended up looking almost soft and puffy…almost like a little pie!
The cookies kept their round shape while baking, but the fork tine baked away a little. Next time, I am going to sprinkle some colored sugar on top of the cookies before baking, just to give them a little extra sweetness and personality.
Jelly Jumbles are a fun cookie that are perfect for your fall holiday parties! The almost pie like and the cookies taste like a fruit pie! suggest serving them with milk or even vanilla ice cream!
Enjoy!
Janet
Jelly Jumbles
Ingredients
½ cup butter
1 egg beaten
½ tsp soda
1/3 cup sour milk
1 cup sugar
1 ¾ cups sifted flour
¼ salt
Currant jelly
Instructions
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and beat well. Mix and sift all dry ingredients and add alternately with milk. Mix well. Chill for several hours. Divide dough into 2 parts and roll dough thin. Cut with round cookie cutter and I the center of each round place ½ tsp currant jelly. Roll out rest of dough and cut with same cookie cutter. Cut two or three small openings (using a thimble) in these rounds. Place on top of jelly covered cookie and press edges together, first with fingers, then with tines of fork. Bake at 425 degrees for about 8 to 10 minutes. Watch carefully.
Recipe Yield
Makes about 3 - 4 dozen pie like cookies 1x
Cookie Category: Molded or Shaped
Cookie Difficulty Rating
