This cookie bar variation of Linzer torte is a traditional Austrian sweet. nut-flavored dough topped with latticework and preserves. An exquisite holiday treat.
| Servings: | 38 |
| Yield: | 38 bars |
Ingredients
- 1 cup white sugar
- ¾ cup unsalted butter, softened
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ¾ cup blanched slivered almonds, ground
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 cup raspberry jam
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 7×11-inch baking pan.
- Cream sugar and butter together in a medium bowl with an electric mixer. Beat in egg and lemon zest.
- Stir flour, ground almonds, cinnamon, and cloves together in a separate bowl. Gradually stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients. Dough will be stiff and may need to be kneaded by hand in order to come together.
- Divide dough in half. Press one half into the bottom of the prepared pan. Place remaining half onto a lightly floured surface and roll it with your hands into a long, 1/2-inch diameter rope.
- Spread jam over the dough in the pan. Cut dough rope into lengths and arrange them across the jam in a lattice pattern.
- Bake in the preheated oven until top crust is golden, about 40 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and set the pan on a wire rack to cool before cutting into 1×2-inch bars.
- After completing Step 3, roll dough to a thickness of 1/8 inch and cut into rounds using a cookie cutter. Place cookies 2 inches apart onto parchment-lined baking sheets. Cut a smaller circle out of the center of 1/2 of the cookies. Bake in the preheated oven until firm and light brown at the edges, 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely. Spread jam on top of the cooled, solid cookies, then sandwich cut-out cookies over top.
Reviews
It was time consuming but worth it. Cookies came out very nice. Not too much problem with the dough. Everyone loves them. My wife said they are very similar to the one’s her Very German mother made her as a child.
This recipe was quite good, the dough was a bit wet so had to refrigerate for half an hour and then use quite a bit of flour to roll it out. I made cookies and filled them with jam and lemon curd. (I read somewhere that Linzer cookies only use egg yolk. Curious to see how that turns out.)
Delicious cookie and easy instructions! I loved this cookie on my first try!
I love the sound of this recipe and as a world class chef in New York I can’t wait to make this at my Mc donald’s restaurant
These cookies are one of our family’s favorites. They are a lot of work, so I have to dole them out one by one so they aren’t inhaled in one sitting. I find most importantly, once the cookies are assembled, let them sit covered in an airtight container for three days. This allows them to soften and the flavors to mellow. They won’t taste that great immediately, but in 3 days check back. Yum!
They ended up being bars that fell apart when I cut them up.
Excellent recipe, dough was easy to work with, baked results are perfect. The almond and spices in the cookies have the authentic taste I was hoping for. I have tried several variations on this recipe and this one is my favorite. It has the taste of your favorite Austrian bakery. This one goes into my permanent, make it every year, file. David Munich, Germany
I make these every year at Christmas time for gifts and for my family. I decided to try a new recipe this past Christmas, and this is by far the best one ever! To make things easier, I used almond flour (or meal) by Red Mill. Also, to make cutting out the cookies easier, I rolled it out between two sheets of waxed paper, then stuck that in the fridge for about a half hour. Cutting and transferring to cookies sheets lined with parchment was easy peasy after that! They came out perfect, and had such a great flavor. I used raspberry jam for the filling, first laying down a very thin layer of semi-sweet chocolate before putting jam over it, then topping with the cutout cookie. I always sprinkle powdered sugar on the top cookies only before assembling. This recipe is a total keeper!!!
Very labor intensive; however, the results are the best ever. They are best around the Holidays. Have a best friend give you a hand.
Made exactly according to the recipe, with linzer cookie cutters. So good! Everyone loved these. 🙂
After making the first sheet of cookies, working with the dough was so difficult that I swore I would never do it again. HOWEVER after tasting one, I changed my thinking completely. These are incredibly buttery and flaky. Very subtle flavor. I used homemade Austrian apricot preserves for the filling. The contrast of the slightly sweet cookie with the tart preserves makes a perfect cookie. It’s all about the finished look and the taste. Get over the fact that the dough is a bear to work with!
For some reason, didn’t work out for me, maybe because of my margarine substitution.
This is a great recipe. I am from Eastern Europe so we made these growing up, but this recipe is actually much better than the one we had. The cookies are supposed to be dry when they come out of the oven, but they soften with time. That’s why we always made these a couple of weeks before Christmas. The dough was very easy to work with and the cookies came out looking great. They didn’t puff up at all. They are very tasty as well. The trick to get them soft faster after they are assembled is to put them in an air-tight container with a few apple pieces overnight. Thank you for a great recipe.
I just finished making a double batch of these cookies and I must say that I am very proud of my efforts. The cookies are beautiful, and the taste is exceptional. I didn’t blanch the almonds, but I did toast them in a dry iron skillet before grinding them in a recently purchased coffee grinder. The dough was flattened into a disk and wrapped in plastic wrap before chilling over-night. I used parchment paper on my baking sheets and had no trouble removing them after they finished baking. The cookies were fairly labor intensive, but then I think any rolled cookie is work! I will be proud to include them on my Christmas cookie trays this year.
I am in Kathmandu with limited ingredients and machines, but this recipe worked perfectly. I made it as a free-standing torte on a baking sheet since the dough could stand up at the sides and stay up through baking. I made the base by pressing it, and rolled out the other half and cut strips for a lattice. Sticky and breaking but doable. I ground whole almonds with their skins in the blender; some were still in small bits and some were pulverized. I used semi-whole wheat flour since that’s what I had; and omitted cloves since I don’t like them. I didn’t have exact measurements but the recipe came out delicious. I used our homemade apricot jam, which is tart, so one batch I mixed in extra sugar, but actually we liked the one with tart jam much better. A local Nepali lady asked me eagerly for the recipe.
This is by far and away the best linzer torte recipe! The dough is a little hard to work with (as expected), but the flavor is spectacular and makes any extra effort totally worth it!
This was a good linzer torte recipe. I didn’t think the dough was very hard to work with; I think it depends on how finely you grind your almonds. I blanched whole almonds and ground them a handful at a time in a blender. When I filled the blender past the top part of the blade, I got larger pieces of almonds. This technique also seemed to work better with perfectly dry (after blanching and peeling) almonds. As another reviewer suggested, rolling out the dough between two pieces of plastic wrap worked really well, too. I made a small tart and about eight filled cookies with this recipe. The tart took longer than 40 minutes to bake; 50 minutes with an egg wash was more like it, but it came out really well. A note about the jam: go ahead and spread it almost to the edge; it doesn’t “spread out” like I thought it might during baking. Overall, these cookies were a lot of work, but for me that is part of the fun.
These cookies are amazing! I substituted toasted hazelnuts for the blanched almonds and used whole wheat flour. The dough is tricky to roll out, but managable and it’s worth the work! When making the cookie version, have a little bowl of water handy to make repairs to the crumbling cookies before going in the oven. The mending works and the cookies turn out nice and crisp.
They were excellent! My whole family loved the flavour. I cut them a bit large though, next time I will use a smaller cutter and roll the dough a little thinner.
these taste just like the linzer torte my hubby’s german grandma makes. i was gonna beg her for the recipe then i found this!! my father in law even approves! thanks for sharing
1 of the best cookies I’ve made. Delicious and look great. I substituted 1/2 the butter with equal amount of canola oil. At first cookies were too soft and smudging or crumbling as I tried to lift after rolling to put onto cookie sheet and bake. Took advice of a few folks her and chilled for 15 min’s or so, and that made all the difference. Was then able to lift off and retain the perfect shape Sprinkle with sugar and put in a cookie tin… makes an elegant cookie to take to a party… and they won’t last long!