Homemade Jammie Dodgers Cookies

I decided to make these melt-in-the-mouth munchies as my youngest brother used to go nuts on the store-bought ones. This is my first ever attempt on biscuits/cookies making. I guess they were not as bad as I had anticipated as my two little brothers almost had a tug-of-war over the last cookie in the tin. BTW, don't worry if you have lots of irregular shapes and sizes for the cookies, they're simply signatures of your culinary style.

Ingredients

• 425 g plain flour
• 75 g caster sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tsp freshly grated lemon zest, from 1 large lemon ( i didn't put this as the boys don't like sourly taste) 
• 4 egg yolks
• 325 g butter, softened
• raspberry or strawberry jam
• icing sugar, for dusting

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 4. 

2. Sift the flour into a large bowl, add the sugar, vanilla extract, lemon zest, egg yolks and butter. Mix with an electric food mixer or a wooden spoon until it comes together as a dough. Remove from the bowl and flatten with a rolling pin or the palm of your hand to about 2cm (3/4in) thick. Wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. 

3. Remove the dough from the fridge and place on a lightly floured work surface. Roll the dough out to about 5mm (1/4in) thick. 

4. Using a 6cm plain biscuit cutter, cut the dough into discs. 

5. Take half the discs, and using either a plain or flower-shaped 3cm (1 1/4in) cutter, cut holes from the centre. Bring the scraps together and roll out to make more discs, and cut holes in the centre of these. You should end up with about 35 whole discs and 35 discs with the centres cut out. 

6. Place the discs on baking trays (you will need a few baking trays) and bake for 8-10 minutes until pale golden. Allow to stand for a few minutes, then remove from the trays and transfer to wire racks to cool. 

7. When the discs are cool, spread 1/2-1 teaspoon of jam on the whole discs and top with the discs with the centres cut out. 

8. Dust with icing sugar and serve.

If you're not quite familiar with what I just talked about, this picture might ring a bell.