Day 3 of Advent: A Universal Recipe of Linzer Cookies

Linzer Cookies are named after the city of Linz, Austria and making Linzer cookies is definitely one of the most famous Christmas traditions. However, when you are trying to find a recipe online, you will get hundreds of different ones. Some of them are too complicated to gather your strength and start baking, while some of them are so simple that you start to wonder if the result will taste good.

After my personal trial, I’ve made this universal recipe for everyone with different tastes. There are two parts to make Linzer cookies, the dough and the jam in the middle.

For the dough, there are only five essential ingredients:

  • Softened butter, 1 cup (225g)
    leave the butter at room temperature for 30-45 min so it gets soft.
  • Sugar, 1 cup (200g)
    taste the jam before baking. If the jam is super sweet, like what I bought, reduce the sugar to 3/4 cup (150g)
  • Vanilla extract, 1 teaspoon
  • Salt, 1/2 teaspoon
  • All-purpose flour, 3 cups (360g)

There are many other recipes adding extra things into the dough, for example:

  • 1-2 eggs/yolks
    adding eggs will make the cookies more colourful/brown and chewy.
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
    to give the cookies a bit of cinnamon flavour
  • 3/4 cup (70g) almond flour/ 1 teaspoon almond extract
    to give the cookies some almond flavour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
    adding baking powder will make the cookies grown and cakey

These are not necessary but they offer different flavours and tastes for the cookies. You can add if you like. But I will stick to the most classic and simplest recipe.

Besides this, we need only jam and powdered sugar, the former is for filling of the cookies, and the latter is for dusting on top of the cookies at the end. For the jam, you can choose anything you like, just for the record, the traditional choice is black currant.

Well, now we have everything we need. So, let’s get started!

Step 1: Mix the butter and sugar together and then vanilla and salt. Mix until combined.

Step 2: Slowly add in the flour, mixing until combined

Step 3: Separate the dough into two batches and flatten them into disks. Wrap them up in a plastic wrap, then put them into the fridge for 1-2 hrs.

Step 4: Take the dough out of the fridge and roll them out to 5-6 mm. Don’t make the dough too thin, otherwise, the cookies will be easy to overbake and to break.

Step 5: Cut out the bottoms and tops of cookies, using each dough respectively and place them on the baking sheet. You can use biscuit cutters, cookie cutters or anything you can find suitable. I used a round plastic cup from yoghurt. 

Step 6: preheat the oven to 180 degrees and then bake for 10-15 minutes or until the edges are lightly browned.

You can see the last few ones are overcooked because they were rolled too thin. So, don’t do this.

Step 7: When the cookies are cool, put 1 teaspoon of jam on each of the bottoms. Dust the tops with powdered sugar and sandwich the cookies.

Done! With this recipe, you will get around two dozen cookies. I hope you enjoy it. And if you don’t want to miss our special advent calendar, don’t forget to check our blog and make sure to subscribe to our special winter newsletter we send each working day.

 

Li Jiaoyang

Hi, there. See the photo on the left? Now we are talking! As a foreigner, the same as most of you, my dear readers, I know exactly what you care about the most.

2 thoughts on “Day 3 of Advent: A Universal Recipe of Linzer Cookies

  1. These sound familiar to my Czech grandmothers recipe. I’m wondering if u have a traditional molecule with filling recipe. Thank u.

    1. Hi Liz,

      Thank you for this comment! As for the molecule with filling you are mentioning, I am not familiar with any sweet treat like that, but perhaps you mean cocoa rum balls? If not, feel free to describe it and maybe I’ll be able to find the recipe to that 🙂

      Kind regards,

      Anna

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