Linzer Cookies

Recreating a Childhood Staple: Linzer Cookies

Traveling back in time is not a superpower. In fact, anyone can do it with the simple taste of a perfectly crafted baked good (or any dish that reminds you of something, really). You can travel back in time to your childhood, to last summer, to your grandma's kitchen when she was baking your favorite chocolate cake, and to endless other destinations. This time, I decided to help my boyfriend travel back to his childhood winter vacations, with my take on his favorite treat - Linzer Cookies.

St. Moritz, Winter 2018

It was my first time in St. Mortiz, and my boyfriend wanted me to go with him to the bakery down the street where he has been getting his breakfast fix for the past who-knows-how-many winters. I am a morning sleeper, especially during weekends or holidays, so I naturally whined as he opened the window curtains and stripped me of my warm blankets in an attempt to wake me up. I got up against my will, put on some clothes, and we were out the door. As we swooshed through the snow, my fingertips were turning purple from the piercing cold, and I started to curse they day winter suddenly appeared in my life. He opened the door to the bakery, and we were instantly hugged by the bread-smelling steam trapped inside the establishment. The smiling staff wrapped our bread, and my boyfriend asked for a cookie "with the smiley face" at the last minute. I was too worried about the aggressive atmospheric conditions that awaited us outside of the cocooning bakery to even think about what in the world "smiley face cookies" meant.

When we got back home, he quickly whipped up some eggs and served me a hot breakfast with delicious just-made rye bread, green tea, and for "dessert" (who has dessert with their breakfast?) a smiley face cookie. Then, it hit me. That's what he was talking about. That fun cookie that sandwiches jam between two delicate and crumbly biscuits with one of them punctured with a funny shape, like a smiley face. He started rambling about how it reminded him about when he was younger and why he loved them so much. In the meantime, my mind was drifting off to how I could recreate this smiley face cookie.

Countless tries later, this is what I came up with. My version does not have a smiley face on it, unfortunately, so let's call it the adult Linzer cookie (Linzer being its actual name).

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Ingredients

130 g of all purpose (AP) flour

80 g of whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon of salt

175 g of cold unsalted butter

90 g of sugar

Zest of 1 lemon

1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Powdered sugar

Jam

Method

STEP 1. In a bowl, mix together flours and salt. Set aside.

STEP 2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add butter, sugar, and lemon zest and beat on medium-high speed until the mixture becomes light and fluffy, and has a pale yellow color. Scrape the sides of the bowl as necessary.

STEP 3. Add egg yolk and vanilla and mix on medium until incorporated.

STEP 4. Add in dry ingredients and mix on low speed until the flour is almost incorporated completely. You should still be able to see some bits of flour here and there. Then, with the help of a flexible bench scraper (I use a silicone one) or a flexible spatula, scrape the sides of the bowl and give the dough one las mix (still with your bench scraper/spatula) as to fully incorporate the flour.

STEP 5. Divide the dough into two pieces, wrap each tightly with plastic wrap (which is actually recyclable) and transfer into the fridge for at least one hour. You can store it as it is for up to one week in the fridge, and up to one month in the freezer.

STEP 6. Preheat your over to 180°C/350°F. Take one disk of dough out of the fridge and give it a couple of minutes before you start rolling it. With a rolling pin, roll out your dough until about 1/3 cm thick. You will be sandwiching these together, so thin biscuits are the goal here. Punch out your cookies with your preferred cookie cutter and make a donut hole (or smiley face if you have that cookie cutter) to half of the biscuits. Bake for about 8 minutes, or until they start browning around the edges. Let cool completely.

STEP 7. Dust the donut hole biscuits with powdered sugar. Then, take a biscuit (without a hole) and flip it to expose the side that was against the baking tray. Spread a dollop of jam up until the edges and place a donut hole biscuit previously dusted with powdered sugar on top of the jam, sandwiching them together.

STEP 8. Serve and enjoy.

PS: I have a video of the whole process over on my Instagram, check it out.

Notes on the Recipe

• If you don't have a stand mixer, you can do them with a hand mixer or even a food processor.

• I used homemade berry jam, but you can obviously use store-bought (you might want to stir it vigorously and add a bit of lemon to make the jam workable).

• You can definitely use all all-purpose flour, but the whole wheat flour adds a pleasing nuttiness to the biscuit. You could also substitute it for almond flour, and I some times even throw a bit of rye flour in there.

• You can certainly add more lemon zest if you want a more powerful lemon flavor, I do it all the time.

• Make sure you work this dough COLD; otherwise, it's going to be extremely hard to handle.

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