Linzer Cookies with a Soft Middle

Set out almond flour or ⅔ cup blanched whole almonds, packed light brown sugar, and all-purpose flour spooned and leveled before you start Linzer Cookies with a Soft Middle. The batch is written for 18 cookies.

Count on 30 minutes of prep, 10 minutes of cooking, 2 hours of resting, about 2 hours from the first measurement to the plate.

Ingredients Method

What goes in the bowl

• 1 cup almond flour (meal) or ⅔ cup blanched whole almonds
• ½ cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour spooned and leveled
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon kosher salt
• ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 cup unsalted butter room temperature
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons powdered sugar for dusting
• 12 ounces seedless raspberry preserves

How the cooking goes

Make cookie dough

1. In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon, and keep it to one side.
2. In a medium bowl, mix the almond meal with ¼ cup of the brown sugar. Be sure to break up any clumps.
3. In a mixing bowl with a hand mixer or in a bowl of a electric mixer, beat the butter and the remaining ¼ cup of brown sugar until incorporated. This mixture won’t get light and fluffy, there is too much butter to sugar.
4. Put the egg and vanilla, and beat until well incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure everything is fully incorporated.
5. Reduce the mixer speed to low and gradually add the ground almond mixture until fully incorporated.
6. Next, add the flour mixture in several additions. Mix until the mix just comes together, and be careful not to overmix. Remember to scrape down the sides of the bowl so everything is incorporated!

Chill the dough

1. Divide the dough in half. Shape each half into a disk and wrap it securely in plastic wrap. Refrigerate until firm, which will take at least 2 hours, or overnight.

Roll, Cut, and Bake

1. Warm the oven to 350°F conventional and line 2 sheet pans with baking paper. Allow the disks to warm up on the counter until they are still firm but not soft. If you rolled the dough between parchment, you can skip to step 10!
2. Dust your work surface lightly with bench flour. Roll out each piece of dough to as close to a ⅛-inch thickness as possible. Rolling the dough too thin will result in crunchy cookies that don’t soften nicely once assembled.
3. Cut the dough with your cookie cutter of choice, and place on a prepared sheet pan. Space the cut pieces of dough one inch apart. Use a smaller cookie cutter, or a paring knife to cut out the centers of half the pieces. Keep your scraps, because you can (and should) re-roll them!
4. Bake the cookies in the preheated oven, rotating the cookie sheets halfway through. You want to bake until the edges begin to brown, the centers puff slightly, and have small cracks on the surface. For me, this was 8-10 minutes for the bottoms and 6-8 minutes for the tops.
5. Cool the cookies slightly on the cookie sheet, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool until it is no longer warm.

Assemble and enjoy

1. When the tops (the ones with holes) have cooled, dust them generously with powdered sugar.
2. Lay about ¾ teaspoon of preserves on the flat side of each bottom (the cookies without holes). You can use a little more if you like, but you didn’t want the raspberry flavor to overpower the almond flavor. Spread the preserves until they almost reach the edges!
3. Set a powdered top on each bottom and press gently to stick them together. You can begin enjoying them immediately, but they continue to improve with time.

After it comes off the heat

Cool the sheet on a rack before the pieces are stacked. A covered tin keeps them for a few days.

If you want another plate from Cookies, open Traditional Speculoos Cookies Baked Until the Edges Set and Hermit Cookies Baked Until the Edges Set.