eggboy and i are heading to the white house today!!! i am so giddy. i brought a lot of outfit options. i’m not sure what to expect, all i know is that we will spend time this afternoon with the white house chef and pastry chef, making gingerbread houses, mac and cheese (!!!), other festive goodies. joy and ashley will be there too!! and we’re all crossing our fingers and toes that an obama will swing by (and i am *praying* that i don’t toss my cookies in their presence). do you think the obamas make gingerbread houses?? do you think they’ve had gingerbread catastrophes too, where they had to resort to hot glue and cardboard walls to avoid any frustration induced tantrums? maybe i can show them how to make a gingerbread oval?

i am just so excited to see the white house, especially around the holidays. the strongest reference i have to it comes from house of cards and veep because i never went on my school trip to d.c. and when i spent a summer outside of d.c. in college, i spent all of my free time at georgetown cupcake. i know. it was at the heigh of my gossip girl phase, ok?

so this is all to say that eggboy and i have a jam packed morning of zipping around the smithsonian, the washington monument, that huge statue of lincoln, and as many other historical things we can find, before heading over to the big house. follow along on instagram stories!!

over the weekend, i had such a fun #mollyontherange event in grand forks! i would have had a local event earlier in the tour, but since launch date was right around the beginning of beet harvest, we held off. it was so gosh darn lovely, everyone was so so sweet, it made me love grand forks even more. i obvi couldn’t show up empty handed, so i brought this flower cake (which in typical grand forks fashion was gobbled up *except* for the flower part because people were too polite to cut into it), and these dala horse rhubarb linzer cookies because i felt like they really reflected our area.

until i moved here, i only kind of knew the dala horse as the cake pan from ikea! but when i got here and started seeing him around town in non-ikea situations, i learned how traditional of a symbol it is in scandinavian culture. (i wish i remember where i got my little horse cookie cutter, his name is bojack, but i’m assuming it was at our town scandinavian shop.) i also learned that you’re an extra good upper midwesterner if you have a freezer full of rhubarb at all times of the year, or that even if you don’t you can get rhubarb jam at almost all of our local grocery stores. or you probably know someone who has a stash. so rhubarb is plentiful, its tartness is beautiful when smooshed between two sugary cookies, and when paired with a dala horsey, you’ve got a good grand forks cookie!

and this is part of bob’s red mill united states of cookies campaign!! check out their cool microsite to take a look at cookies from all of the other states. this is such a tasty diverse project. my cookies use their unbleached all-purpose flour, which is extra appropriate in this case since the sugar cookie dough here is a nice all-purpose dough. you don’t have to use it for linzers, you can use it for cutouts, uh-oh oreos, cookie trees, or even mini cookie houses. it will hold its shape when you bake it and it won’t spread that much at all because there aren’t any leavening agents. this yields a slightly crispier cookie, but when sandwiched with jam or buttercream, i think it’s jussst right.

rhubarb linzer cookies

makes 15-18

ingredients

1 c unsalted butter, softened

1 c sugar

3/4 tsp kosher salt

1 large egg

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp almond extract

3 c all-purpose flour

about 10 tb rhubarb jam (homemade or store bought)

powdered sugar, for dusting

clues

preheat the oven to 350ºf and line two cookie sheets with parchment.

in the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter, sugar, and salt until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. beat in the egg and extracts. gradually mix in the flour until combined.

turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. (alternatively you can wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for up to 2 days before proceeding to the next step.) roll out the dough until it's 1/4-inch thick. cut out 3-inch circles using a cookie or biscuit cutter. place half of the cookies on the baking sheet 1 inch apart. use a smaller cookie cutter to cut out a shape from the center of the remaining cookies. place those on the cookie sheet 1 inch apart (you may have to bake in batches).

bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges of the cookies turn slightly golden. remove the cookies from the oven and cool on a wire rack.

once cooled, place about 2 tsp of jam in the center of a cookie and then squish into a sandwich with one of the cutout cookies. repeat with remaining cookies and then let set overnight.

dust with powdered sugar before serving and enjoy!

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-yeh!

Thanks to bob's red mill for sponsoring this post!

their unbleached all-purpose flour is a great versatile kitchen staple. get more recipes by visiting the united states of cookies! also get a coupon for some bob's red mill flours here.