Linzer Hearts

Submitted by Rose Straebel, Marketing and Sales for Fresh Baby

from The Silver Palate Cookbook by Julee Russo and Sheila Lukins 

The dough for this recipe needs to chill for four to six hours so I make the dough the evening before I plan to bake and refrigerate it over night. I omit the walnuts due to a nut allergy, and they are still delicious!

¾ lb. (3 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
1 ¾ cups confectioner’s sugar
1 egg
2 cups all purpose flour, sifted
1 cup cornstarch
2 cups shelled walnuts, finely grated
½ cup raspberry preserves

Cream butter and 1 cup of the sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and mix well. Sift together the flour and cornstarch. Add to the butter mixture and blend well. Thoroughly mix in ground walnuts. Gather dough into a ball, flatten and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill for 4-6 hours.

Roll dough out t ¼ inch thickness. Using a small heart shaped cookie cutter (about 1 ½ inches long), cut out cookies and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Chill cookies for 45 minutes. If dough gets too soft while cutting out cookies, gather up and chill for a little longer until you can roll and cut out cookies.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Bake cookies 10-15 minutes until evenly lightly browned. Remove and cool on a rack. While still warm, spread half the cookies with raspberry jam, using about a ¼ teaspoon for each. Top each cookie with one of the remaining cookies.

Sift the remaining confectioner’s sugar into a bowl. Press top and bottom of the cookies into the bowl of sugar to coat.

Makes about 4 dozen cookies

-- Photo by Rose Straebel.