Valentine Wishes and Linzer Cookies

According to Wikipedia, the Linzer Torte (or Linzertorte) is an Austrian and Hungarian torte with a lattice design on top of the pastry. Linzer Torte is a very short, crumbly pastry made of flour, unsalted butter, egg yolks, lemon zest, cinnamon and lemon juice, and ground nuts, usually hazelnuts, (but even walnuts or almonds are used), covered with a filling of red currant jamor, alternatively, plum butter, thick raspberry or apricot jam. It is covered by a lattice of dough strips. 

Linzer Cookies (Nut-Free)
original recipe from Family Circle Magazine, 1979 (vintage!)
(Print Recipe)

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons cinnamon
1 12 oz. jar jam (raspberry, strawberry, apricot all work well); we use Nutella also
confectioner’s sugar

Heat oven to 350.

Beat butter and sugar in large bowl with mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in egg, egg yolk, lemon rind and vanilla extract.

Mix flour, baking powder and cinnamon. Stir into egg mixture, blending well to make a stiff dough; use hands if necessary to mix ingredients together. Divide dough in half on separate sheets of plastic wrap; flatten into disks and chill several hours or overnight.

One disk at a time, roll dough between sheets of wax paper to about 1/4″ thickness. With 2″ round cookie cutter,  cut as many circles from dough as possible. Carefully remove circles from wax paper and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Chill scraps before re-rolling and cutting out circles.

With second disk of dough, repeat process of rolling and cutting out circles. Using a smaller cookie cutter or knife, cut shapes in this batch of circles. Again, chill scraps before re-rolling.

Bake 8-9 minutes or until edges are just starting to turn golden. Remove from oven and cool cookies on stovetop for 1 minute, then carefully transfer from cookie sheets to wire cooling racks and cool completely. (I have found if you let them rest on the cookie sheet longer than a minute or so, they tend to stick to the pan and break when removed.)

Spread a layer of jam on each of the solid (bottom) cookies. For this batch we also used Nutella (chocolate-hazelnut spread) on some of our cookies – yummmmmmm!

Dust the cookies with cut-outs (tops) with confectionary sugar. Top each bottom cookie with a top to form a sandwich.

Delight your family and friends with your amazing and beautiful Linzer Sables!

Now, because I hid Valentine treats for my family so well, even I couldn’t find them this morning, so I’m off to search my house!
(At least I sent them to school with a little love in their lunchbox – thank goodness for those cookie cutters!)