Linzer Cookies With Raspberry Jam Filling

I have had some special love for the filled sandwich cookies; cookies filled with cream, jam, preserves or ice cream. Put me to a situation, where I have to chose either of the cream filled ones or the jam filled ones, chances are that I’ll pick both. Both the versions take me back to my childhood. My mama would never let us stay without the cookies. Every afternoon, when the school ended, it used to be tea time for her and milk and cookie time for us kids. And dad always ensured that containers were never empty. He used to bring us brown paper bags full of freshly baked cookies from a local bakery. Bags full of all sorts of cookies; some spiked with Indian spices{ cardamom, carom seeds, cumin seeds }, some coconut cookies {very similar to chewy coconut macaroons} and some jam filled cookies. Out of all, jam cookies used to be my most favorite.

Even today, while I am working sitting on my workstation, I get a sudden craving for those sandwich cookies in the afternoon and that craving is so intense that it forces me to walk down to the cafeteria and buy myself a pack of cookies. Seeing such madness, one of the colleagues asked me that why I hadn’t baked them yet. And to my astonishment, I had no answer. Sometimes we are so busy that we miss such obvious things. Why I hadn’t baked them yet ???

And before, the question could haunt me more, I decided to give them a shot. I took this recipe of Linzer Cookies from JoyOfBaking and halved the ingredients. And they came out so well, not-so-overly-sweet and crisp cookies sandwiched with fruity preserves having a hint of cinnamon and lemon rind. I wish I would have made the full recipe.

Ingredients

150 grams almonds (blanched and peeled)
260 grams all purpose flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt {skip if using salted butter}
Zest of one small lemon
226 grams unsalted butter, room temperature
150 grams white sugar, divided
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 egg yolks

Topping

Icing sugar for dusting
1/2 cup Raspberry Jam, well stirred

Instructions

1. Toss the almonds in a pan over medium heat, for 2-3 minutes and let them cool completely.
2. Once cooled, grind the almonds to a fine powder in a food processor with 1/4 cup of sugar.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, salt and lemon zest.
4. In another bowl, beat remaining sugar with butter until pale and fluffy. Beat in vanilla extract and egg yolks.
5. Beat in ground almonds and then flour.
6. Divide the dough into two halves, cover with cling wrap and refrigerate for 30-60 minutes.
7. Remove one half of the dough from fridge. Roll out the dough kept between two long sheets of cling film using a rolling pin until it is 1/4 inch thick. You could also roll them out without cling film, but that would require work surface to dusted with some flour.
8. Using 3 inch cookie cutter of any shape of your choice, cut cookies in pair such that one cookie out of the pair has an opening cut out {using another cutter of smaller size than the previous one}.
9. Place the cookies on baking sheet. Let them rest in fridge for another 10 minutes. This will prevent them from puffing too much and losing their shape.
10. Bake them in a 180 Celsius preheated oven for about 12 minutes, until edges starts to become golden in color.
11. Let them cool on wire rack. Once completely cooled, dust the cookies with holes cut out, with icing sugar. Apply jam on the other half, place cut-out cookie on top and sandwich them together.