Serves 8 or more
Notes
Baking with children is like a hands-on art project in the kitchen. Here, children can help sift ingredients and get their hands in the bowl to mix. Use fun cookie cutters for the dough cutouts on top- flowers or hearts or animals- whatever appeals to the young ones in your family. Cherry jam is kid friendly, but you can use any jam that you like.
Ingredients
- 1 large egg, beaten
- Sugar, for sprinkling
- For the dough
- 3 cups all purpose flour, plus more for rolling the dough
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 sticks (1 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
- 2 large egg yolks, chilled
- 1/2 cup ice water, or as needed
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- For the Filling
- 2 cups chunky cherry jam
- 1 cup chopped pitted Bing cherries
Directions
For the dough, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Drop in the butter and toss to coat in the flour. Use the tips of your fingers to rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Whisk the egg yolks, water, and vanilla together and drizzle over the flour mixture. Toss quickly to form a rough, shaggy dough, adding a little more water if it is still too dry and crumbly. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead a few times just to bring the dough together. Form into a flat rectangle, wrap in plastic, and chill 1 hour (or up to 1 day). (You can also make the dough in a food processor.)
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Cut off two thirds of the dough and roll into a 12-by-16-inch rectangle. Fit the dough into a 10-by-15-inch rimmed baking sheet, folding the dough over the sides and trimming it flush to the edge of the pan. Combine the jam and cherries in a medium bowl and toss to combine. Spread evenly in the bottom crust. Fold the edges of the bottom crust over to form a border.
Roll the remaining piece of dough to a 1/4-inch thickness on your floured work surface. Use a variety of small cookie cutters to cut out shapes and lay over top of the filling, leaving spaces in between. Brush the edges and shapes with the beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar. Bake until the crust is golden brown and the filling is bubbling, about 30 to 40 minutes. Let cool on a rack before cutting into squares to serve.
