Charlene's Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 pound lightly salted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 T vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups finely ground blanched almonds
• 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• Few grains of salt
• Red raspberry seedless jelly
• Granulated sugar (for rolling)

Instructions

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter until creamy. Add sugar and beat for four minutes. Stir in vanilla and salt. Add flour and mix well. Stir in almonds. Cover and chill dough for 4 hours or more.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Take about 1/4 of the dough and roll it out on a lightly floured board to 1/8" thickness. Roll patiently, dough is tender. Cut out dough with 1" round cutter and place on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 10 – 12 minutes, until cookies show a hint of color. Remove from oven and transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool. Roll out and bake remaining dough. At this point the baked cookies may be frozen.

Before serving, make raspberry jelly cookie sandwiches with pastry wafers and roll edges of each sandwich with sugar.

This is a huge recipe and makes 140 cookie sandwiches. It can easily be cut in half.