Butter Cookies with Jam (Suhe Kiflice sa Džemom) - Butter Crescents

Butter Cookies with Jam (suhe kiflice sa džemom) are classic buttery crescents filled with preserves and rolled in powdered sugar. Melt-in-your-mouth and nostalgic, these are meant to be shared. Shall we?

Jump to:

• Background
• Why You'll Love These
• Ingredients
• Instructions
• Variations
• Handling
• More Cookies You'll 💙
• Expert Tips
• Recipe FAQs
• Thoughts?
• Jam Butter Cookies
• More Recipe 💙
• Butter Jam Cookies Background Story

Background

Butter cookies with jam are in every Balkan mom's holiday cookie arsenal. These buttery half-moons are melt-in-your-mouth irresistible!

Though called suhe kiflice sa džemom (“dry jam crescents”) in literal translation, the name is misleading. You see, all cookies that are not soaked in syrup (roses, tufahije, etc.), are grouped under the term "dry" in Balkan cuisine.

While they may look simple, most butter cookies (including our jam version), take a little bit of elbow grease and patience. However, it all pays off at the first incredible mouthful.

Why You'll Love These

• Soft and buttery. Jam butter cookies stay tender and moist even days after making due to the rich, butter infused dough.
• Perfect gift. Pack them up in a cute box, and voila - you just made the most delectable gift anyone can receive.
• Nostalgic and comforting. All cultures have their own version of jam butter cookies. They evoke gatherings with family and friends, packing memory and flavor at once.

Ingredients

Butter cookies with jam require only a handful of ingredients. Here they are:

• Butter. Unsalted butter is the base of the dough, and gives it rich, soft texture. Substitute with margarine, but be vary of its salt content. (Also note margarine could cause the cookie texture to be softer or possibly too flat.)

• Eggs. Regular eggs only, don't substitute.

• Sour cream. Regular sour cream will add moisture and softness to the dough. Avoid substitutions.

• Yeast. Use instant yeast. Avoid yeast that needs proofing.

• Flour. White flour will create pliable dough. Avoid substitutions.

• Lemon. Zest only, for subtle freshness.

• Vanilla. Sugar or liquid forms. Substitute with rum, bourbon or other extracts. Avoid spices like nutmeg, etc.

• Jam. Most jams or preserves will do fine: plum, orange, raspberry, fig, rose hip, apricot etc. To avoid leaking, look for a jam with thick texture.

• Powdered sugar. For coating.

Instructions

Here are the instructions to make jam butter cookies (kiflice sa džemom):

Step 1. Using a mixer, mix butter, egg yolks, egg, sour cream, yeast, lemon zest, and vanilla until combined.

Step 2. Gradually knead in flour with your hands until a firm dough forms.

Step 3. Divide dough into 3 parts. Cover in cling wrap, and refrigerate 4–6 hours, or overnight.

Step 4. Take out, and bring dough to room temperature (45–60 minutes).

Step 5. Further divide each dough roll into 3 pieces (total is 9). Roll each into a thin round. Cut into 8 wedges. Heat oven.

Step 6. Place jam on each edge and roll into crescents. Transfer to parchment lined pan.

Step 7. (Not pictured.) Lower temperature. Bake 30–40 minutes, turning pan halfway. Check often and cover with foil if needed.

Step 8. Cool 20–30 minutes. Roll in powdered sugar.

Variations

1. Jams. While plum jam is the most traditional jam for Balkan cookies, most jams on the thicker side will work just as well.
2. Butter vs. margarine. Margarine will make the jam butter crescents even softer, but it's questionable how healthy of an option this is. However, use when in a pinch.
3. Nut filling. Adding a few chopped nuts to jam makes for a richer crescent center and adds to taste and texture.

Handling

Butter cookies with jam keep terrifically well. Here are a few handling and serving suggestions.

Serving. These are best served at room temperature with coffee, tea, or a cordial. They're great for holidays, religious celebrations or casual gatherings.

Storing. Store them in a covered or sealed container, in a cool pantry up to a few weeks. They keep well and are ideal for making ahead.

Freezing. While freezing the dough is welcome, don't freeze baked jam butter cookies.

Simply wrap the dough tightly in cling foil then place in a freezer friendly container with a lid for up to 3 months. (Write the production date on the box.)

When ready to make, thaw in refrigerator overnight, and take out to room temperature 30-60 minutes before rolling the dough.

More Cookies You'll 💙

Here are a few more cookies we can't get enough of!

Expert Tips

• Use patience making the dough. Butter dough can be a challenge. Use strength when kneading, and careful timing. Don't rush to add too much flour at once.
• Watch the color, not the clock. (Very Important!) These cookies burn quickly. As soon as they turn golden, cover with foil. Alternatively, adjust temperature to your own oven, as each is different.
• Sugar after cooling. Allow cookies at least 20–30 minutes before dipping them in powdered sugar. This is to prevent sugar melting or cookie crumbling.

Recipe FAQs

Thoughts?

If you make today's Butter Cookies with Jam (Suhe Kiflice sa Džemom) and like them, please consider leaving a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5-star) rating. This will help others find the recipe more easily!

You can also leave a comment, I read EVERY one! Finally, if IG is more your thing, consider tagging us @balkanlunchbox.

Prijatno, Dobar Tek, and Bon Appetit!

This recipe was kindly shared with us by V.B.

More Recipe 💙

Butter Jam Cookies Background Story

A personal story behind this recipe.

Upon arriving to the US, we discovered a small community of Bosnian immigrants that lived in the DC area.

Like us, they left one life in exchange for another. Like us, some lived through the war, and still crossed the street apprehensively observing high points around them. They looked suspiciously at the hills. They flinched at flashes of glass as windows opened. This is the kind of walking you learn when snipers are around, and snipers abounded in Sarajevo during the early nineties.

Others spent time elsewhere during the war, but were asked to leave their second homes behind once the war was over. European countries like Germany were giving money to Bosnian refugees to send them back to their burned out cities so they could start building again. However the US still had a refugee program through which people could apply to come to the promised land. Many did.

And that’s how there appeared a big mélange of Balkan people in, and around Alexandria, Va.

We took to each other quickly. These friendships were our lifelines in those years. Generations separated into their own comfortable rhythms, but we all shared the music, cultural idiosyncrasies and jokes no one else could understand.

And we shared our sweet language, which as the years passed kept dividing and growing that we had to cling on to it like spurned lovers. Those words, those accents, those sounds we owned so well, suddenly sounded foreign. English, in its unassuming and sneaky way, started to show up in our sentences until some completely abandoned the old language in favor of the new.

One of the families we became friends with was a couple with two daughters. Both daughters took after their mother and were beautiful. Lanky but soft, possessing ivory complexion and dark, dark hair, they resembled princesses from Russian fairy tales.

One was my age, and for a while we were close friends. The older was a few years ahead of us and had a disability that determined she would not be able to participate in all of life’s experiences.

But their mother, oh boy, the world rarely sees an unstoppable figure like her. She was the one who pulled the most. As a teenager, I found her overbearing. It was as if she hung above us like an umbrella, just waiting for the world to hurl itself down on us. And in those years we wanted to hurl ourselves onto the world instead.

That woman created things into reality when and where she could. And when she couldn’t, she relied on her endless imagination to bend the world to her will. She did this for both daughters, especially the older one.

Results were fantastic. A fully able person had not experienced even half of what this young woman did, all thanks to her mom.

The mom did all this (to us seemingly) effortlessly and with humor.

This dark, heavy, relieving humor is specific for Bosnia. It’s our therapy. Brutally honest. It assesses the culture with no reservations. It boils down mentalities into basic of generalizations. It’s truthful. It shows potential for potential.

You know when you laugh things become a little easier. Suddenly perfections become imperfections, and imperfections are perfect the way they are. Dark humor is Bosnian wabi-sabi. Suddenly you don’t envy anymore. Suddenly there is sunshine where there ain’t any sunshine.

Suddenly, life is good.

And life was good. We made it good. We picked up the pieces. We rebuilt. Day by day, year by year, we became as essential (important even?) part of DC metro like generations of immigrants before us.

One couple opened up a restaurant. We hung out there, celebrated NYE, July 4th, and Halloween. There was finally a place to buy pita. A place to buy the well-known Vasina cake. A place to sit down and talk, cry and laugh. And send the boss to hell in proper Balkan slang (by telling him to go screw his mother), and then hear about a new job opening.

We celebrated most holidays together. And although as a young adult I was running away from traditions and to parties of my own, secretly I enjoyed attending these. There was a feeling of familiarity, of being around people who genuinely wanted you to succeed and saw a part of their own success in your growing up.

The food at these parties was indescribable.

Usually there were so many of us at least one huge table would have to hold the entire spectrum of entrees. I feared at some point one of these tables would break under the heaviness and kill someone. Still not sure how this was avoided.

You could eat anything there – from pitas, salads, to cakes, schnitzels, strudels and baklavas – and the hostess would even pack up a few things for you to take home.

Each time. Every time. Every hostess.

In all that opulence though, my favorite were the jam crescent cookies made by my friends’ mom.

For every occasion she’d come with a present for everyone. Sometimes this was a lighter for the ladies who still smoked, that flickered a small penis as they reached to light their cigarettes. Sometimes everyone got a stuffed ballerina toy.

But often, she brought along these jam filled margarine crescents. I don't think she knew, but for me they were the beginning and the end of every celebration.

She gave mom the recipe before mom moved back to Sarajevo. Since then, these crescents are a regular rotation at our holiday table.

Every time I eat them, I am reminded of those early years in the US. And I'm reminded of this time when we went to NYC together, just the women and girls except our disabled friend who had travelled somewhere with her father.

While we were doing the regular Manhattan tourist-y things, the mom kept on walking behind the group, turning around frequently. Later that night, at the hotel, for the first and only time, I heard her say anything direct about it all. "I keep walking and looking to see where she is to make sure she crosses the street safely."

I started to understand her in that moment. But I fully understood her only several years later, when I couldn't fall asleep because I was listening to someone's breathing to make sure they were still alive.

Jam crescents are a happy occasion now. They are a tribute to a wonderful woman, and her family that keeps on growing.

And the fantastic folks I met along the way and of becoming an adult in between two worlds, in a small community that grew large. A community that held each one of its children in a tight cocoon until we were ready to spread our wings.

We've all flown further than we ever imagined.