Linzer tarts are as versatile as your imagination– and an assortment of cookie cutters– will allow. I have made them for Valentine’s Day, Fourth of July and Christmas and simply changed the way I presented the design to fit the occasion. (See all the photos examples below.) This recipe comes from the cookbook Alice’s Tea Cup, a tea house located on the Upper West Side in New York. I have yet to visit the location, however, I have revisited the cookbook by the same name many times over! This is one of my favorite cookie recipes from the book.
Ingredients:-
- 2 cups unsalted butter at room temperature
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 2 eggs-1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 6 cups all-purpose flour (plus extra for rolling)
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup strawberry jam
- Confectioners sugar for sprinkling-(2 teaspoons zest–orange or lemon **optional)
Directions:
- Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl.
- Add the eggs, mixing them in one at a time, and then the vanilla, and mix until well incorporated.
- Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. With the mixture on its lowest speed, slowly add the dry mixture. Mix until you have a workable dough.
- Cover the dough and refrigerate for at least one hour, until firm.
- When you’re ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
- On a lightly floured surface roll out the dough to a 1/4 inch thickness. With your cookie cutter, cut the cookies out and place them 1 inch apart on a non-stick baking sheet.
- Gather the remaining dough, roll it out, and cut more cookies using a small heart-shaped cookie cutter, cut out the centers of half the cookies.
- Bake the cookies for 6-8 minutes or until ever so slightly browned.
- Set aside to cool completely on the baking sheets.
- Take one of the plain (non-heart-cut) cookies and using a small spoon/spatula spread a 1/8 inch layer of jam neatly and evenly over it covering the top of the cookies.
- I left a little edge on my cookies and didn’t spread it all the way to the ends so that when I place the other cookie on top I wouldn’t have extra jam spilling out over the edges.
- Lay the heart cut cookies on a clean surface and sprinkle them with confectioner’s sugar.
- Holding the sides of the heart-cut cookies, carefully place one on top of each jam-covered cookie, lining them up perfectly.
Recipe credit: adapted from Alice’s Tea Cup Cookbook
Photo credit: Rose Kesting
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