Bunny Love

Who doesn't love cookies? To me cookies symbolize a holiday because I always have some delicious little buttery morsels at Christmas, Easter, and other celebrations. While I might make a batch of chocolate chip cookies now and then throughout the year, I tend to choose to bake an easy cake rather than individual little cookies more often.

But considering how much I love cookies, I think that should change. And I think you might tend to agree with me when you see how perfect these Linzer Cookies came out. They're so much easier than you would ever guess!

Linzer Cookies - makes about 36 sandwich cookies

1 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups icing sugar, sifted, plus extra for dusting
4 egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla
3/4 cup ground almonds
3 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon each of baking powder and salt 
3/4 cup jam, I used half blackberry and half peach

1. Cream the butter and icing sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks and the vanilla. Stir in the ground almonds. 

2. In a separate bowl, sift the flour with the baking powder and salt. Stir this into the butter mixture until combined. Then form two discs out of the dough and chill in the the fridge for about an hour. 

3. Preheat the oven to 375 and line two baking trays with parchment paper.

4. Knead the cookie dough a little to soften it and then roll it out. Use a two inch round cookie cutter to cut out cookies and then stamp a small cookie cutter in he middle of half of the cookies. Re-roll any leftover dough and repeat. 

5. Lay cookies on the parchment lined trays and bake about 15 minutes. Cool cookies fully before sandwiching. 

6. Sift icing sugar over the cookies with holes and smear jam on the base cookies. Sandwich together and enjoy. 

I actually bought a linzer cookie cutter. It has a bunch of little cookie cutter attachments for the circle cutter and saves you a step. Just use the circle cutter to cut out half of the cookies and then attach the small cookie cutter and cut out the remaining half!