Game Night Linzer Cookies
Buttery delicious cookies filled with jam and cut into card suit shapes that are perfect for game night.
Ingredients
- 1 cup slivered almonds
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp cardamom (optional)
- 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
- Zest from 1 lemon
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
- 1 large egg yolk
- 3/4 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp almond extract
- Seedless strawberry, raspberry, or another red jam for filling
- Seedless blackberry or another dark jam for filling
- Confectioners sugar for dusting
Instructions
- Pulse the almonds in a food processor until finely ground. Set aside. In a small bowl, rub the lemon zest into the sugar and set aside.
- In large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, cinnamon, cardamom (optional) and salt. Add the ground almonds and stir to blend. Set aside.
- In another large mixing bowl, beat the butter with a hand mixer until fluffy and pale yellow. Add the zest and sugar and beat until combined. Add the egg yolk, then blend in the vanilla and almond extract, and beat on low speed until blended.
- With the hand mixer on low speed, slowly add the flour and almond mixture to the butter mixture and beat just until combined. Be careful not to overmix. Divide the dough in half and form each into a disk. Wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
- Working with one disk at a time and leaving the other half chilled, roll out dough onto a floured surface to about 1/4" thick. Cut out shapes with card suit cookie cutters (or whatever shape you'd like). Transfer cookies to parchment paper-lined baking sheets. Roll out the other half of the dough and cut out the cookies as before, but also cut out a peekaboo in the center of each one. You can cut a small circle or a square, or duplicate the shape of the overall card suit cookies with a template, or a smaller cutter in the same shape. Transfer to a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. You should have at least 12 solid cookie halves and 12 matching peekaboo cut-out cookies.
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Bake in preheated oven 12-15 minutes or until cookies are firm to the touch. Cool on baking sheets on wire racks. After about 5 minutes, gently loosen the cookies with a thin spatula but leave them to finish cooling on the sheets.
- When completely cool, spread about 1/2 teaspoon red jam over each of the solid heart and diamond cookies, leaving about a 1/4" border. Do the same with the blackberry jam and the solid spade and club cookies. Dust the peekaboo cookie halves with powdered sugar. Place sugared cut-out tops on top of the solid-piece bottoms with the jam.