Jammy dodgers | Easy recipe | Cooking with my kids (2024)

These jammy dodgers or jam heart biscuits are the perfect Valentine’s day treat for little chefs to make. Delicious crumbly shortbread sandwiched with jam into cute jam heart biscuits – what could be sweeter!?

This easy homemade jammy dodgers recipe is perfect for kids. With a lovely soft, buttery biscuit sandwiched with strawberry jam, these jam heart biscuits are such a fun bake.

These are a perfect Valentine’s Day bake. Your kids will really love doing some love themed baking with these easy biscuits. Or if you want to enjoy them at another time of the year, swap the heart shaped cutter for something else like a round or flower cutter.

What is a jammy dodger?

Jammy Dodgers are a really popular biscuit here in the UK, similar to a Linzer cookie. What most people probably don’t know that you can really easily make your own! Jammie dodgers are a shortbread biscuit sandwiched together with a tasty jam filling. The heart shaped cut out in the top biscuit gives them their iconic look.

Essentially, they’re a jam heart biscuit, although you can make them any shape you like if you don’t have heart shaped cutters.

How can kids help to make these jammy dodgers?

This easy jammy dodger recipe is great for kids. It’s just a very simple biscuit sandwich with a heart (or any other shape) cut out of the middle. Kids can help to make the biscuit by measuring and mixing all the ingredients together.

Once you’ve made the biscuit dough, your kids can have a lot of fun rolling and cutting the cookies out before cutting the heart shape from the middle.

Finally, once they are baked, your kids can help to add the jam and assemble the jammy dodger sandwich. No step is particulary difficult so it’s a great bake for even very young children.

What jam should I use jam in my jammy dodgers?

Jammie dogders typically use either raspberry or strawberry jam, but the best thing about making your own is that you can fill them with any flavour you like. Lemon curd, or a different flavour of jam would all work equally well. Or why not check out our recipe for chocolate dodgers.

How do you store these jam heart biscuits?

These will keep in an air tight container for 2-3 days. If you want, you can freeze them and they’ll keep for up to 3 months. To freeze them, wrap them individually in cling film or glad wrap and pop them in a freeze bag. Defrost them fully at room temperature before you serve them.

What other Valentine’s day bakes are there?

If you liked these jammy dodgers and want to make something else for Valentine’s day, check out these other loved themed recipes:

Jam hearts
Heart cookies
Valentine’s day crinkle cookies
Hidden heart cookies

Useful equipment

You might need the following baking tools/gadgets to make these jammy dodgers.

Digital scales
Freestanding mixer
Mixing bowl
Measuring cups
Measuring spoons
Rolling pin
Cutters
Wire rack

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Difficulty: Easy

Time: 30 minutes + 15 minutes baking

Serves: 10 biscuits (approx)

Ingredients

80g (1/3 cup) caster sugar
160g (2/3 cup) unsalted butter, softened
240g (2 cups) plain / all-purpose flour
Jam

how to make homemade jammy dodgers

Preheat your oven to 180C / 350F and line your baking trays (2 or 3) with baking paper

Mix the butter and sugar together

Get your kids to measure out the sugar (80g) and butter (160g) and pop them in a large mixing bowl or freestanding mixer. If your butter isn’t soft, blast it in the microwave for a few seconds before adding to your bowl otherwise it’ll be hard to mix.

Use some wooden spoons and give it a good mix until it’s well blended. Or alternativley, you can use a hand held mixer or the k-paddle of your freestanding mixer.

Make the biscuit dough

Measure the flour (240g) then add it to your bowl.

Mix it together until it is thoroughly mixed and a dough starts to form. You could use your spoons for this, or get your hands dirty. Tip your mixture out on to your work surface. Knead it together until it forms a ball. Then chill it in the fridge for 15 minutes.

Make the jammy heart biscuits

Sprinkle your worksurface with a little bit of flour and get your kids to help roll your dough out so it is about half a cm thick. Rotate it 90 degrees after a few rolls so that it rolls out nice and evenly and doesn’t stick to your work surface.

If you need/want to, you can put the dough in between two sheets of baking paper to stop it sticking.

To make jam heart biscuits cut out your biscuits using a round cutter. Using a smaller heart shaped cutter cut out the centre of half of your biscuits. If you don’t have a heart shaped cutter, use any shape to cut out the centre or two round cutters. Pop them on your baking trays. Re-roll the scraps and cut out more biscuits until you’ve used all your dough.

Sprinkle your biscuits with a little caster sugar.

Bake your biscuits

Pop your jammie dodger biscuits in the oven for around 15 minutes. They’re done when they are turning golden brown. The biscuits with cut outs will bake a little bit faster so you might need to remove them from the oven a little sooner.

Remove them from the oven, leave to cool on the trays for a few minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

Make the jammie dodgers

Spoon a little jam (about 2 tbsp) into a dish or pan and either warm in the microwave or on the cooker until has softened a little. This will make it a lot easier to spread.

Get your kids to help you spread jam on to the top of each ‘full’ biscuit. Then make a sandwich by placing the heart cut out biscuit on top.

Enjoy!

Pin jammy dodgers biscuits for later

Similar recipes

If you liked these jammy dodgers you’ll love our jam tarts, empire biscuits and jam hearts. Or check out our favourite easy bakes for kids.

This recipe was first published in February 2017, and republished with new pictures in January 2023.