Christmas Cookies

One of the best parts of being home from school is that I get to bake again. In Mississippi, people are very generous and neighbors brought our family many different types of jams and jellies while I was away at school. I thought that the perfect way to use up the delicious homemade jellies was by making linzer cookies for Christmas. I filled half of the cookies with raspberry jam and the other half with homemade mayhaw jelly from one of our neighbors.

I first fell in love with linzer cookies when I went to an Austrian pastry café, called Konditorei, back in California. They served these round sweet almond cookies filled with tart apricot jam. The combination of the two was simply delightful.

In the spirit of the holiday season, I decided to make my own linzer cookies shaped like cozy mittens for Christmas. The great thing about linzer cookies is that you can have fun with them by making them whatever shape you want and fill them with your favorite jellies.

Here's one of my favorite linzer cookie recipes so you can try these scrumptious cookies yourself.

Ingredients:
2 cup all-purpose flour

2/3 cups finely ground almonds

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened      

2/3 cup granulated sugar                 

1 egg                                               

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup jam of your choice

Confectioners sugar (optional)

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, combine flour, almonds, and cinnamon; set aside.

2. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla; mix well. Add flour mixture; mix only until incorporated. Divide dough into 2 disks about 1 inch thick. Wrap separately in plastic wrap and refrigerate 2 hours until firm enough to roll.

3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. On floured surface, roll out one disk of dough 1/8 inch thick. Keep remaining dough chilled. Cut shapes out of the dough with a cookie cutter of your choice. Roll out the remaining piece of dough and cut cookies of the same shape; this time, cut a circle (or shape of your choice) in the middle of the cookies. Transfer to parchment paper lined baking sheets. Dough scraps can be formed into a disk, chilled for 30 minutes and rerolled.

4. Bake 10-12 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool on cookie sheet 2 minutes; remove from sheet and cool completely. Spread jam on all of the cookies without the center cutouts. Dust the top cookies with cutouts with confectioners sugar if desired and sandwich the two cookies together. Makes about 20 cookies.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas and have a sweet New Year!

Stay sweet!