Linzer Cookies

Happy New Year folks! hope you had a wonderful holiday season with your family. After a long gap of two months, I am here to share a new recipe. The last couple of months I was busy as my parents came to visit us for the first time. We spent quality time together and created lots of nice memories that will bring smiles for a long while. As my culinary journey started from US, I never got an opportunity to cook for them in my own kitchen. This time I fulfilled my long-cherished wish to serve my father, who is a big time foodie and he always appreciates whatever I cook for him. Anyway, once they have returned back to India, slowly I am getting back to the blog.  Like every year, during Christmas time, I made some cookies and Fruit Cakes. This year we baked Linzer cookies for Santa, who came on time, ate and left the gift for my 9-years old :-) Good to see that he still believes in Santa.

Christmas Baking 2016 

I got attracted to these beautiful looking cookies as soon as I saw their pictures on a social media site. Not only I am happy with how they came out but loved the photography part too, as they are very photogenic. I did not need to spend much time to get some decent photos. In Linzer cookies, two almond flavored cookies are sandwiched together with a layer of jam. The top cookie is dusted with a thin white coating of powdered sugar. 

The name of Linzer cookies seems to have come from the city of Linz, Austria. Any flavor of jam or preserves can be used to sandwich the cookies together, though traditionally black currant preserves were used as a filling.  Here I used raspberry jam, bought from the store. The baked cookies are quite crisp, but once they are filled with the jam they start to soften. If you want to keep the cookies crisp, fill them with the jam only on the day of serving. So turn on your oven and make some cookies. Whether it’s Christmas or not, winter is the best time for baking, a lovely way to make your home warm. 

Linzer Cookies

Ingredients:

Almond Flour: 1 cup 
All Purpose Flour: 2 cup 
Ground Cinnamon: 1/2 teaspoon 
Unsalted Butter: 2 sticks, at room temperature 
Granulated white sugar: 3/4 cup
Egg yolks: 2 large 
Vanilla extract: 1 teaspoon 
Salt: a pinch 

Toppings:

Icing sugar: 
Raspberry jam: 1/2 cup 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F or 180 degrees C. 

2. whisk all-purpose flour, cinnamon, and salt. Set it aside. 

3. In the bowl of the electric mixture or with a hand mixture beat the butter and sugar, until it is light and fluffy. Add vanilla extract and egg yolks. Beat it well. Beat in the ground almond and finally add the flour mixture. 

4. Make a dough. Divide the dough in half, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate it until it is chill.  

5. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Remove one of half dough from the refrigerator and roll out on a lightly floured surface to the thickness of 1/4 inch. Cut out desired shapes using a lightly floured 3-inch cookie cutter. Place the cookies 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheet. Use a smaller cookie cutter and cut out the centers of the half of the cookies. If you want, you can buy a Linzer cookie cutter set. I have used those. 

6. Chill, reroll the scraps and cut out the cookies until you are done. Repeat it with the second half of dough. The dough will make 24 to 26 3-inch cookies. If it makes 24 cookies, you have to make 12 full cookies and 12 cutout cookies. 

7. Put the unbaked cookies in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to chill it. Bake cookies for about 10 minutes to 12 minutes or until the edges are brown. Remove from the oven and let cookies cool. 

8. Lightly dust the tops of the cutout cookies with powdered sugar. Spread a teaspoon of jam on the bottom surface of the full cookie. Now place the cut-out cookie on top and gently sandwich them together, 

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Soft Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies

Most likely this is my last recipe of the year. Today's one is Ginger Molasses cookies. Christmas celebration is not complete without baking any cookies. Though Ginger Molasses Cookie is people’s favorite throughout the year, they are most popular specifically during Christmas Holidays. These are highly addictive, has nice combination of robust flavor of molasses and a rich spicy flavor of ginger. Ginger Molasses cookies are full of moist, soft and chewy that anyone would simply love it.

Molasses is thick and dark sticky syrup. It helps the cookies to turn a lovely dark ginger-brown color. It also adds a sweet flavor and gives them a nice texture. If you don’t get molasses, you can use brown or white sugar as a substitute. Though earlier I made chocolate chip cookies couple of times, baked these ginger cookies for the first time. Few of them will be sent to one of my friends for Christmas gift. I had to read many useful tips on how to make best cookies before baking these cookies.

Here are the tips that could help you :

• Use room temperature butter : the fastest way to get butter to room temperature is to cut it into pieces and let it sit for 30 minutes.
• It is very important not to over mix the batter to get fluffy cookie.
• Chill the batter before baking : though it is time-consuming but it helps to prevent the cookies from flattening.
• Lower the oven temperature : if you are baking thicker cookie turning down the temperature 25 degrees back.
• Check on cookies 2 -3 minutes before they should be done, because cookies burn easily.  

Now coming to the actual recipe, that is very simple, takes hardly 30 minutes to complete the whole process.

Recipe of Ginger Molasses Cookies : for 2 dozens Cookies

Ingredients :
All purpose Flour / Flour : 2 cups
Baking Soda : 2 teaspoon
Ground Ginger : 2 teaspoon
Ground All Spice Powder : 1/2 teaspoon
Salt : 1/2 teaspoon
Unsalted butter : 1 stick ( at room temperature )
Sugar : 1 cup
Egg whites : 2
Molasses : 1/2 cup ( as a substitute use brown sugar or white sugar 1/2 cup molasses = 3/8 white or brown sugar)
Vanilla extract : 1 teaspoon

Method :

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F or 180 degrees C.
2. In a medium sized mixing bowl, take flour, baking soda, ground ginger, ground all spice powder and salt. Mix them together with a whisk and set it aside.
3. Using a stand mixer or hand mixer or wire whisk cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg whites one at a time and whisk.
4. Add molasses and vanilla extract mix them to combine.
5. Then finally add the flour mixture to molasses mixture. Mix it until just combined but do not over mix.
6. Line a parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Using a cookie scoop or ice-cream scoop ( 1 and half spoon for 1 ball ) take the dough and place on a parchment paper. Use two cookie sheet or bake in two batches so that cookies get enough space at least 1-1.5 inches between each cookie.

7. Bake them for 12 to 14 minutes. Remove form the oven and let it cool down on a wire rack. Serve with glass of milk, or a cup of coffee or tea. You can cover and store these cookies for about a week at room temperature.

Note : Chill the dough / batter before baking : though it is time-consuming but it helps to prevent the cookies from flattening.

Wish you all my readers Merry Christmas and a fabulous 2014 !!

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