Day 12 of my 12 days of Christmas cookies/treats! It is the final day, and I will end with one of my favorite cookies of all time. I have always loved biscuits with jam in the center. My first experience with jammy biscuits were the quintessential jammy dodgers, that are famous in England. They have a sugary crust on the top,where sugar is put on top of the biscuit, once it is baked, and then baked for another few minutes to get a crunchy top. I can eat half a packet of those jammy dodgers cause they are so good! Linzer cookies hail from Austria, and are jam biscuits too, where jam is slapped between 2 cookies. The top is coated with powdered sugar and it looks so pretty!
I make linzers every year, 1) because they are so easy 2) because they are super delicious 3) because I love these biscuits with the variety of jams that I make during the summer! I have tried the linzers with hazelnut flour(I grind up hazelnuts), and almond flour. I love the taste and texture that almond flour imparts to baked goods, and I do use almond flour quite a bit in my bakes.These cookies are super easy, and so fun to make with kids as they love to put the little indentations in the middle, and also layer the jam in the middle of the cookie. My kids like to sprinkle the “snow” or powdered sugar on the top of the cookie as well! These cookies are fun to serve at holiday parties as well.
I flavored the dough with cinnamon, star anise and orange zest, but you can make the dough without these ingredients as well.
I hope you have enjoyed all the 12 days of fun treats, to make for your loved ones, friends and family, Or simply for yourself, OR to make cute cookie boxes to gift as well OR for your holiday parties OR for cookie exchange parties! This was a lot of fun to share with you all, and I should start thinking about next year now 🙂
I have a final post coming up tomorrow, on how to put together a cookie box, with huge inspiration from some of my favorite bloggers like Erin at Cloudy Kitchen and Fanny at Oh Sweet Day,and the legend Martha Stewart, who started the whole cookie box trend! I will give some tips that I learnt along the way, on this blog post tomorrow. So excited to share with you!
Cheers,
Amisha
Day 12: Almond Linzer Cookies
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup almond flour
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground star anise
- 1 tbsp orange zest
- 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
- 1 large egg
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup of your favorite jam
- Garnish:
- Powdered sugar to shower over the cookies
Instructions
- 1. Whisk together flour, almond flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon in a small bowl.
- 2. Beat together butter, orange zest and granulated sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes in a stand mixer . Beat in egg and vanilla. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture, mixing until just combined.
- 3. With floured hands, form dough into 2 balls and flatten each into a 5-inch disk. Chill disks, wrapped in plastic wrap, until firm, at least 2 hours.
- 4. Put oven racks in upper and lower thirds of oven and preheat oven to 350°F.
- 5. On a large surface, sprinkle some flour. Put the disk on top and sprinkle more flour on top. Roll out 1 disk of dough into an 11-inch round (1/8 inch thick). If dough becomes too soft to roll out, rewrap in plastic and chill until firm. Cut out as many cookies as possible from dough with larger cookie cutter and transfer to 2 ungreased large baking sheets, arranging about 1 inch apart. Using smaller cutters, cut out centers from half of the cookies, reserving centers and rerolling along with scraps (reroll only once).
- 6. Bake cookies, switching position of sheets halfway through baking, until edges are golden, 10 to 15 minutes total, then transfer with a metal spatula to racks to cool completely. Make more cookies from second disk.
- 7. Spread about 1 teaspoon jam on flat side of 1 solid cookie and sandwich jam with flat side of 1 windowed cookie. Sandwich remaining cookies in same manner. Dusting of powdered sugar on the top!
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