Adapted from the recipe by Alison Roman, featured in New York Times Cooking
Total Time: 3½ hours, including chilling
Yield: About 2 ½ dozen cookies
Ingredients
*Items currently available at the Saratoga Farmers’ Market
● 3 cups all-purpose flour
● 1 cup raw, skin-on almonds (or ¾ cup/75 grams almond flour)
● 1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
● 1 teaspoon baking powder
● 1 teaspoon kosher salt
● 1½ cups unsalted butter (3 sticks)
● 1¼ cups granulated sugar
● 2 large eggs*
● 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
● 1 cup/290 grams raspberry jam* (or jam of your choice, many options are available at the farmers’ market)
● Powdered sugar for dusting
Instructions
1. Pulse together flour and almonds in a food processor until the almonds are very finely ground. Add cinnamon, baking powder and salt, and pulse to blend. (Alternatively, whisk together flour, ground almonds or almond flour, cinnamon, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.)
2. Using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar together on medium-high until the mixture is light, fluffy and pale, 2 to 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add in eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla extract, and beat until everything is well combined, again stopping to scrape down the bowl as necessary.
3. Add in dry ingredients all at once and mix on low speed, just until incorporated.
4. Divide dough in 2 equal pieces, and wrap each piece in cling film, patting into a 1-inch- thick disk. Chill at least 2 hours, up to 5 days ahead.
5. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Working with 1 disk at a time, roll out the dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper so it's about ⅛ inch thick. (Because of the almonds, the dough may crack in places while you’re rolling it out. This is O.K., just patch it up with scraps.)
6. Using a round cookie cutter 2½ inches in diameter, cut out as many circles as possible. Take half of these circles and cut out a 1-inch circle from the interior of the larger circles, creating a doughnut shape that will become the top of the cookie. If the dough becomes too soft to cut and cleanly remove from parchment paper, slide it onto a cookie sheet and chill in the freezer or refrigerator for a few minutes. Gather any dough scraps, combine them and roll them out, chilling as necessary. Transfer dough circles to a parchment-lined baking sheet spaced 1 inch apart and bake until the edges are golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes.
7. To assemble the Linzer cookies, spread about a teaspoon of raspberry jam onto the flat sides of the larger circles. Dust the tops of the cutout circles with powdered sugar and place on top of the raspberry jam.
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