{TWD} Linzer Sablé Cookies

The TWD bakers have received a wonderful Christmas gift: three of the five December recipes are cookies, and fairly straightforward ones at that. I mean, when the hottest issue in the week's P&Q is how many cookies the recipe yields, and how thin to roll the dough, you know it's a breeze! Thanks to Dennis from Living The Life for choosing this festive and delicious (and easy!) recipe.

Linzer tortes are typically made with raspberries, and they're really delicious. I was excited about making these. So I marshaled my collection of jams:

Hard to believe, there was not a jar of red raspberry anywhere in the lot. Dorie says apricot is an alternative, but I have no apricot jam either, a fact which led me to use grapefruit marmalade in the rugelach a few weeks ago. (By the way, see S-dog in the background? Doesn't he look like he's up to no good?)

Lacking Dorie's preferred jam varieties, I chose three substitute jams for my cookies: Seedless Black Raspberry, Cloudberry (a distant cousin of raspberry apparently)[edit: I bought the Cloudberry Preserves at IKEA], and a little bit of Four Fruit that was left in the jar when I finished making the Buttery Jam Cookies (which will be the subject of a TWD post coming in a week or two. Yes, it was a little confusing making, photographing, and taking notes on two kinds of jam-related cookies at the same time.)

These vintage aspic and hors d'oeuvres cutters are from the 50's or 60's, when people ate aspic regularly, and I guess cut it into tiny decorative pieces.

I had visions of using these mini-cutters for decorative windows in the middles of plain circular cookies. But my 1980's biscuit cutter set (from my early matrimony days) is missing the 2" cutter. So instead I used a 2" star cutter and a slightly larger scallop cutter.


I also used my 2.5" biscuit cutter and tiny angel and star cutters for the windows (those cookies are the ones at the beginning of this post).

cook's notes

- the dough warms up very fast. Especially if you forget to cut out the middles until your cookies are already in the oven.

- I rolled the dough slightly thicker than 1/8". After rerolling the scraps, I ended up with 20 or 21 sandwiches and the little cut out middles as tiny cookies.

- My cookies were done around 7 minutes.

- You can successfully cut window in the cookies right after you take them out of the oven, in case you forgot one.

- The longer you boil your jam, the thicker it will end up when cooled (even 30 more seconds in the microwave will make a huge difference.)

the verdict:

These cookies are really delicious. The almond-y dough is perfect with jam. A.L.E. and I enjoyed sampling the various jam and shape combinations. They're all quite good, I'm happy to report! The rest are going into the freezer for Christmas uses.

The tiny cutout cookies were perfect for a doll's tea party. I thought I'd treat Mr. Teddy, who always sits patiently in the room next to the kitchen.

I'll bet you can guess what happened right after I took this photo! Luckily, Mr. Teddy didn't mind sharing his cookies with S-dog.

If you want to bake these for youself, you can find the recipe on Dennis' post, or on page 134 of Dorie Greenspan's book Baking From My Home to Yours. For further baking fun, check out the Tuesdays With Dorie blogroll and click on the blogs of 359 other bakers to see what they're baking up.

{Note: I'm celebrating my first 100 blog posts with a cookbook giveaway - to enter, go here and leave a comment before December 3}