Butter Cookies with Fruit Preserves

I'm going to get myself in trouble with these luscious cookies. They are amazing! As always, I was looking for a good recipe and came with several that looked nice...but not the best. So, I tweaked and combined and came up with the recipe below. I was looking for something to take to a friend as a gift. These were very elegant.

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Rounded 1/2 teaspoon salt
3 sticks (1 1/2 cups) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
zest of one or two oranges
juice of one orange
1 large egg, lightly beaten
fruit preserves (I prefer orange marmalade)

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.

Beat together butter, sugar, extract, zest, and juice in a large bowl with an electric mixer at moderately high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add egg and beat well. Add flour mixture and mix at low speed until just combined.

If the consistancy comes out too sticky, add a bit more flour a little at a time until you get the dough into rolling mode.

Roll dough out on an unfloured surface (its hard, but you dont want the outside of the cookies to be floury) to a 1.2" thickness and then take a small wine glass or round cookie cutter and cut out cookies, placing the rounds on ungreased cookie sheet. dent the center of the cookie and fill with preserves.

Bake at 350 for about 10-15 minutes or until edges are lightly browned.

They are so much better the second day! This is what I mean by trouble...I could eat the whole batch myself. I made these for Mother's day in the shape of stars with raspberry preserves and I really prefer the orange marmalade.

Enjoy!
Seth