Striped Date Cookies are irresistibly good and fun to make

These striped date cookies are made of layers of buttery shortbread dough and date walnut filling. They’re full of the old-fashioned flavor of clove and plum butter (you could also use apple butter or pear butter) and they’re the perfect split between tender cookie and chewy filling.

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This would have been a greatest of all time cookie on my Czech great-grandma’s list. Her personal favorite cookie was a date pinwheel, and she always requested them of my Mom. I love the pinwheels too, and feel free to use this filling in place of the cranberry in cranberry swirl cookies.

Personally, I like the contrast of the dark filling in the stripes with the cookie dough. This is a looker of a cookie and they’re plain elegant to eat with a cup of strong black tea or coffee.

I think you’ll have a good time making these cookies, so let’s get cracking.

Striped Date Cookies

Why these cookies are going to stay with you

1. Symphony of flavor and texture: There’s a lot of flavor packed into these cookies. The tannic crunch of walnuts with the chew from the clove spiked dates against the buttery shortbread gives you something to think about. This is not a cookie that will bowl you over with sweetness; it’s a sit and enjoy it slowly kind of cookie. Eat them while you’re reading a cook book in a cozy chair; something by Agatha Christie or Dickens.
2. These are genuinely fun to make: It might seem hard or complicated to make the layers, but the opposite is true. This dough rolls easily and so does the filling.
3. Make now, bake later: Like my other slice and bake cookies like pecan sandies and cranberry swirls, once you’ve made up the dough log, you can pretty much make these whenever you feel like it. Want a midnight fresh cookie? Cut a slice off the log and bake it!

Helpful equipment for making date stripe cookies

1. Double rolling pin: This little tool is awesome for rolling INSIDE a pan. You can absolutely get away with just pressing the dough into the pan, though you won’t get as neat of layers. You can of course roll with a larger rolling pin and press the dough into the corners with your hands. That also works.
2. Plastic wrap: This is one time to roll the dough between two pieces of plastic wrap. This way you won’t have to add any flour to the dough and you’ll be able to keep an eye on the size of the sheet.

A note about plum butter

Plum butter is a special kind of plum jam. It’s pretty common in Eastern Europe to make plum butter at the height of plum season when the plums are at their sweetest. When picked this way, the plums are cooked down without sugar into a very thick spread, not dissimilar to our apple butter or pear butter.

This is one time where I will advise you to buy the real thing (you’ll know you’ve found the right thing when the only ingredient is plums). Unless you’re a backyard gardener, it will be hard to find the right variety of damson plums that make this incredible jam. Also, in this recipe, you want a thicker jam so that the cookies don’t get too too soft. Lastly, the thick plum butter is so thick, that once combined you can actually ROLL this filling, which makes making the stripes in this cookie both really fun and easy.

I have a European market in drivable range of me where I can find this butter year round. If you can’t find it, no worries; just use apple butter, which almost has the right texture out of the jar, and 100% has the right texture if you used my apple butter recipe.

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