The festive season is fast approaching and with it comes all of those delicious festive bakes. Linzer cookies are a traditional Austrian cookie, popular here in Germany too, traditionally baked for the Christmas season. They’re extremely soft and light and are the type of cookies that just melt in your mouth. Typically filled with raspberry or strawberry jams, with a light sprinkling of icing sugar, they not only taste great but look picture perfect too.
Linzers can be enjoyed all year round and can be filled with jams, buttercreams or caramels. These cookies are filled with a sweet Latin American favourite, dulce de leche, to make a mouthwatering cookie sandwich. Similar to traditional Alfajores biscuits but with Austrian Linzers!
These cookies are one of my favourite recipes on the blog. After a lot of trial and error, experimenting with different flours and quantities, I finally managed to create a gluten-free cookie dough for Linzers that hold their shape 100%! A no-spread dough is imperative for Linzers in order to preserve any intricate shapes and to prevent those holes in the middle from spreading into one misshapen cookie.
The dough is simple and quick to make, with readily available ingredients. After chilling for 30 minutes, the dough can be cut out and the cookies can be placed straight into the oven to bake, for only 8 minutes! Let them cool, fill them with your favourite jam, buttercream or caramel and they’ll be ready to pop in your mouth in no time! Simple!
What special equipment do I need for these cookies?
- 6cm fluted cookie cutter, plus a small star or heart shaped cookie cutter for the centre holes (optional)
- Stand mixer with the dough handle attached (optional)
- Baking paper
- Piping bag and round piping nozzle
What ingredients do I need?
- Butter – Unsalted, room temperature butter is best for the buttercream but cold is fine for the dough
- Caster sugar – White refined caster sugar or fine caster sugar is preferred
- Eggs – Medium free range eggs at room temperature or cold
- Gluten free flour* – A gluten free flour blend such as Doves Farm Plain Flour with added Xanthan gum or Schär- Mix C is perfect for this recipe, otherwise a standard flour blend will work fine. The most important factor is that the flour blend does not contain baking soda or baking powder. This will make the cookies rise and spread too much!
- Vanilla paste – Vanilla essence, extract or vanilla paste can be used as long as it is gluten-free
- Ground almonds – Blanched ground almonds look better and leave the cookies looking nice and pale
- Xanthan gum – Xanthan gum is essential for most gluten-free recipes and there are no exceptions here
- Salt – Salt is needed in order to offset the sugar
- Icing sugar – Standard icing sugar, sifted to avoid a lumpy frosting
- Dulce de leche – Homemade or shop-bought, you can substitute with a salted caramel or jams too
Tips
- Room temperature butter is important for the buttercream so that it can be whipped up into a light and fluffy texture
- Rolling the dough out between two sheets of baking paper will make it easier to cut the cookies after chilling and prevent having to use a floured surface to avoid the dough sticking which will many the dough drier
- Roll out the dough to a thickness of around 5mm and chill for at least 30 minutes before cutting out the cookies to bake. Bake the cookies immediately, rolling out and chilling any excess cut-offs in the meantime.
Dulce de leche Linzer Sandwich Cookies
These dulce de leche linzer sandwich cookies are quick to whip up and are melt-in-your-mouth delicious.
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Bake Time: 8-10 minutes
Chilling Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Servings: 25 cookies
Difficulty: easy
Author: Sarah | Baked by Sarah, Gluten Free
Ingredients
For the linzer cookies:
- 250g gluten free plain flour *(See Note)
- 100g caster sugar
- 125g unsalted butter
- 1 egg + 1 egg yolk
- 100g ground almonds
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence or paste
- 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
For the frosting:
- 80g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
- 160g icing sugar
- 5 tablespoons dulce de leche
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 150°C Fan and line a baking tray with baking paper.
- In a mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until combined.
- Add the egg, egg yolk and vanilla paste and whisk until well combined. Try not to overmix as an over aerated mixture will give too much rise to the cookies.
- Add the flour, ground almonds, salt and xanthan gum and mix until a dough forms. If using a stand mixer, the dough handle can be used.
- Roll the dough out to a 5mm thickness between two pieces of baking paper so as to avoid using any extra flour as this will dry out the dough.
- Place the rolled out dough into the fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes.
- Once chilled, cut out the cookies using a fluted cutter and place on the baking tray at 1 inch intervals.
- Bake on the middle shelf for 8-10 minutes. The cookies will still be pale in colour but starting to turn golden around the edges.
- Allow the cookies to cool on a cooling wrack whilst preparing the buttercream filling.
- For the buttercream, cream the butter until light and fluffy.
- Add the icing sugar and dulce de leche and mix until thoroughly combined.
- Transfer the buttercream into a piping bag fitted with a round nozzle tip and pipe onto the base of a cookie before adding the top cookie to create a sandwich.
- Place in the fridge to set before serving.
Happy Baking!
Tried this recipe? Let me know what you think!
