Linzer Cookies

Christmas cookies are as much a part of the Christmas season as decorating your own home or the Christmas tree together. Linzer Cookies are no exception and, besides butter cookies, vanilla crescents and cinnamon stars, they are one of the most popular Christmas cookies.

My recipe for the popular jam double-decker is quite easy, which is why even the little ones can get involved in the next pre-Christmas baking marathon. Shall we get started? Let’s go!

Needed ingredients for baking Linzer Cookies

For the Linzer Cookies you need:

• 14.1 oz / 400 g pastry flour: you can easily replace the pastry flour with white spelt flour.
• 7 oz / about 200 g butter: please make sure to use unsalted butter.
• 3 egg yolks: with the leftover egg whites you can either make a nice egg white omelet or use them for coconut macaroons.
• 1 packet with 0.28 oz / 8 g of bourbon vanilla sugar: be sure to buy real vanilla sugar. Don’t use vanilla sugar if you can, as it is artificially made.
• Grated zest and juice of a lemon: please make sure to buy an organic lemon with zest suitable for consumption.
• 1.76 oz / 50 g ground almonds or hazelnuts
• 1 cup red currant jelly: you can use whatever jam you prefer. However, jelly is the most suitable, as it does not contain pieces of fruit that could cause problems when filling the Linzer Cookies.
• Powdered sugar for rolling or dusting.
• A pinch of salt to enhance the flavor.

How can I bake the Linzer Cookies

The recipe card for printing or saving with all ingredients and summarized steps can be found in the recipe card index below. For detailed steps, pictures, tips, hints and recipe suggestions, just keep reading at this point.

Making the shortcrust pastry

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Flour the work surface. Now put all the flour on the work surface and form a mould in the middle. In this mould you can now add the 3 egg yolks, the butter in pieces, the sugar, the grated zest and the juice of a lemon, the vanilla sugar and the ground almonds. Now knead all the ingredients with your hands into a smooth ball of dough. When you have kneaded the dough well, there should be no butter visible. Now place the dough in a tupperware bowl or wrap it in cling film and let it rest in the fridge for about 2 hours.

Cut out the cookies

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (top/bottom heat) or 170 degrees Celsius (convection heat). Roll out the chilled dough on a pastry mat or floured work surface with a thickness of approx. 4 mm. Now cut out the cookies with a cookie cutter of your choice. Use the same cutter for the bottom and top cookies. Make sure to cut out an even number of cookies. Now cut a hole with a smaller cookie cutter in the center of every 2nd cookie that has already been cut out. Then carefully place the bottoms and lids with a knife on a baking tray covered with baking paper.

Bake the cookies

Place the baking tray on the middle rack and bake the Linzer Cookies for about 8-10 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown. Please always keep an eye on the cookies, as they can darken relatively quickly. Also keep in mind that every oven is different and the baking time can be slightly off. So keep your eyes open! 🙂

Now place the cookies either on a cold second baking sheet, a cake rack or on plates and let them cool down well. In the meantime, you can take care of the second tray.

Fill and combine the cookies

Stir the jelly and fill it into a piping bag. Place a blob of jelly in the center of each of the bottom cookies. Make sure that it is slightly larger than the hole in the top cookie. This is important so that the cookies will stick together well. You can of course also use a small spoon to fill the Linzer Cookies.

Now put the powdered sugar on a flat plate, roll the top cookies in it and place them on top of the bottom cookies with the jam. Of course, you can also simply dust the top cookies with powdered sugar.

The Linzer Cookies must now dry for about 3 hours, but preferably overnight in a single layer inside a tupperware bowl or on plates. After that, you can also stack them in containers. If you store the Linzer Augen in Tupperware, they will keep for up to 3 weeks without any problems.

I hope you enjoy baking them. I would be happy if you share this recipe on facebook.

I hope you liked my post. Long nights are not uncommon for me. This is the only way I can keep up filling this blog with new content regulary. That's why the coffee supply should never being interrupted :-) If you like to you can buy me a coffee by leaving some bucks into my paypal coffee fund. That would be great.