Linzer Cookies
‘An extravagant Austrian Christmas offering, the dough rich and short with ground toasted hazelnuts.’
Hands-on time 45min, plus chilling and cooling. Cooking time about 30min. Makes 28 sandwich cookies, with ruthless re-rolling
● 100g skinned toasted hazelnuts
● 125g caster sugar
● 300g plain flour, plus extra to dust
● 200g unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
● ¼tsp ground cinnamon
● 1 large egg plus 1 large yolk, at room temperature
● Icing sugar, to dust
● About 4tbsp redcurrant jelly
● About 4tbsp seedless raspberry jam
1 Blitz hazelnuts and sugar in a food processor until you have a fine sand texture, then add flour, butter, cinnamon, ⅛tsp fine sea salt, the whole egg and egg yolk. Blitz until a dough forms; this won’t happen instantly, so be patient.
2 Divide dough evenly into 4. Shape each ¼ into a disc, wrap individually
in clingfilm and chill for 1hr (up to 3 days).
3 Remove 2 of the discs to soften at room temperature for about 15min. Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan) mark 4 and line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment cut to exactly the same size as the sheets.
4 Roll out 1 of the discs on 1 of the parchment sheets to 2-3mm thick (if your dough is very sticky, roll it between 2 pieces of parchment). Using a 6cm round cookie cutter, dipped first in flour, stamp out 6 circles from the dough. Lift/scrape away the excess dough, leaving your circles on the parchment. Transfer on the parchment to a baking sheet. Shape trimmings into a ball.
5 Repeat process with the next disc, only this time you’re making the tops of the cookies, so you will need to choose your mini cutters, dip them in flour and then cut out your central shapes; a small hole, heart, Christmas tree, snowflake, angel or star. Add trimmings to the reserved ball. If your kitchen is
warm, chill cookie tops for 10min before stamping out central shapes.
6 Bake cookies for 9-10min, until very light gold at the edges. Transfer to a wire rack.
7 Repeat steps 4-6 with the remaining dough discs (softening them first), making sure the cookie sheets have cooled down before you load them up.
8 To assemble the cookies, dust the top biscuits with icing sugar. Mix jelly and jam until smooth. Spread ½tsp over a base, leaving a thin border. Lay a dusted biscuit on top, feeling justifiably proud of yourself and your beautiful Christmassy creation. Carry on with the rest of the cookies, your festive sense of bliss increasing giddily as you go. PER COOKIE 151cals, 2g protein, 9g fat (4g saturates), 16g carbs (7g total sugars), 1g fibre
GET AHEAD Bake biscuits up to 3 days ahead. Cool and store in an airtight container at room temperature. To serve, assemble and eat on the same day.