These are one of the most beautiful cookies I have ever baked. But physical beauty aside, they are also very delicious. Sometimes beautifully decorated cookies end up disappointing in taste. Too sweet and lacking in flavour complexity.

If you’re looking for fast holiday cookies, these are not for you. These take time, but you will be rewarded with intensely flavoured and beautiful cookies. These cookies were inspired by a recipe from the November/December Holiday issue of Chatelaine magazine. In the original recipe, the top of the sandwich cookies were dipped in melted white chocolate, dyed pink with food colouring. They were filled with raspberry jam. When my husband tasted them he said that they were good, but they needed more raspberry flavour.

I needed to figure out how to boost the raspberry flavour. Sandwiching more jam in the middle would not work. It would just ooze out. Adding a border of buttercream would act as a dam, holding in more jam.

I made a batch of Swiss meringue buttercream and flavoured and coloured it with freeze-dried raspberries, ground up into a powder. Freeze dried fruits are a great way to flavour buttercream. I used about 3/4 cup of freeze dried raspberries to the buttercream. If I added 3/4 cup fresh berries to the buttercream, it would be way too wet.

The second way I boosted the raspberry flavour was to mix some freeze dried raspberry powder into the melted white chocolate, for dipping the top of the sandwich cookies into. Natural food colouring with flavour!

Start with a vanilla sugar cookie dough. I like to roll the dough out between two sheets of parchment paper as soon as I make it, rather than chilling first and then rolling. I find it very difficult to roll cold dough. After rolling the dough, chill for at least an hour.

Once the dough has chilled, cut out your shapes. A fluted square cutter is very pretty for these.

Dip half the baked cookies into the raspberry white chocolate and pipe the other half with a border of raspberry buttercream. I used a small French star tip to pipe the buttercream. Fill in the centre of the buttercream with jam. Top each sandwich cookie with a chocolate dipped lid.

Store cookies in an airtight container in the fridge. They should be fine for 4-5 days. Let come to room temperature before serving. You could also freeze them for several weeks. A little box of these gems would make a beautiful holiday gift.