Ok, over the holidays I did a lot of research and testing and this is the recipe. After all of the trial and error and attempts with other recipes, Smitten Kitchen has the winner, go nowhere else. These cookies are a labor of love and so worth it. The only change that I made was to leave out the food coloring because it is so bad for you and I don’t care about the color. These absolutely vanished before anyone noticed they were supposed to be colored anyway.

Also made a batch with one layer of raspberry, but everyone preferred the original, with only apricot filling.