The Bull’s Eye Cookies are delicious shortcrust pastries filled with jam or other creams. Typical of Trentino Alto Adige and popular throughout Italy, they owe their distinctive name to the shape of the cookies, which closely resembles a “bull’s eye” egg, especially when we choose to fill them with apricot jam! Crispy to the bite, delicious and buttery, and moreover simple to make because the base is a shortcrust pastry to roll out to make many cookies that once baked we will fill as we prefer!
The preparation is very simple: blend the cubed butter with the flour in a mixer to obtain a sandy mixture. Add the remaining ingredients and work with your hands until you get a compact and homogeneous dough, which we leave to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. Roll out the dough and shape many cookies, piercing half with a smaller round cutter or another shape. Bake the cookies in the preheated oven at 356°F for about 15 minutes, remove them from the oven, and let them cool completely. Fill the whole cookies with jam or other types of creams and dust the pierced cookies with powdered sugar. Overlap the latter on the filled cookies, and they’re ready!
Perfect for tea time or as a snack, Bull’s Eye Cookies are also delicious to enjoy at breakfast and generally at any time of the day, or as a dessert to offer guests or to treat ourselves when we crave a homemade, genuine, and delicious sweet!
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- Difficulty: Very Easy
- Cost: Very Economical
- Preparation time: 30 Minutes
- Portions: 10
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: All Seasons
Ingredients for Preparing Bull’s Eye Cookies
- 4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup butter
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 2 eggs (or 4 yolks)
- 1 pod vanilla (or grated lemon peel)
- apricot jam
- 1 pinch salt
Tools for Preparing Bull’s Eye Cookies
- Mixer
- 1 Pastry Board
- 1 Rolling Pin
- Cookie Cutter
- 1 Baking Sheet
- Parchment Paper
- 1 Oven
Steps for Preparing Bull’s Eye Cookies
Prepare the Bull’s Eye Cookies by first making the shortcrust pastry: take the cold butter out of the fridge at least 20 minutes earlier and cut it into cubes.
Put it in the mixer or stand mixer together with the flour and blend until you get a sandy texture.
Transfer the mixture to a bowl and add the sugar, eggs (or yolks), the seeds from a vanilla pod (or grated lemon zest), and a pinch of salt. Start combining all the ingredients, then move to a floured work surface and knead until you get a smooth, homogeneous, and compact dough. Wrap the obtained shortcrust pastry in cling film and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
After the resting time, roll out the shortcrust pastry with the rolling pin on a floured surface to a thickness of 1/4 inch. Cut out many cookies with a round cookie cutter and in half of the obtained cookies cut out a circle in the center using a smaller round cutter or alternatively the back of a piping tip.
As they are ready, place the cookies on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake them in the preheated oven at 356°F for 15 minutes.
Remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool completely on a wire rack.
Fill the whole cookies with a spoon of jam and dust the pierced cookies with powdered sugar.
Overlap the pierced cookies on the filled cookies and the Bull’s Eye Cookies are ready to be enjoyed.
Simo and Cicci recommend
You can keep the bull’s eye cookies well-closed in a tin box for up to a week.
You can also freeze the uncooked cookie dough, tightly wrapped in plastic and then placed in an airtight bag for up to three months, while it’s not recommended to freeze ready-made bull’s eye cookies.
You can use any jam you prefer for the filling (raspberries, strawberries, cherries) or a spreadable cream like hazelnut spread like Nutella or pistachio, or alternatively with custard plain or with coffee, chocolate, or orange.
You can also use cookie cutters of different shapes, such as hearts, stars, or flowers.
