Linzer Hearts
The pictures were updated and the video was added February 11, 2016.
Hearts are everywhere nowadays. Grocery stores, boutique shops, department stores. It is hard to go anywhere and not be bombarded with them. Hearts are on stuffed animals, chocolates, jewelry and clothing as well as stuck into red and white floral arrangements. Face it, you can’t escape them.
This Valentine’s Day, go with the ‘heart flow’ by baking heart shaped cookies. I know that rolled sugar cookies are the traditional way to accomplish this, but I do not enjoy making them so I don’t.
What I do love is an easy way of getting a delicious cookie without the hassle. My Linzer Hearts do just that. They are baked in a jellyroll pan and then cut out of the pan using…drum roll please…a heart shaped cookie cutter.
The base of the Linzer Heart is a delicious butter cookie that is patted into the whole pan, and then topped with raspberry preserves. To give it the linzer style, part of the buttery dough is rolled out thinly and placed onto the top of the preserves in a checkerboard pattern.
In a way it seems as though we should be slaving away in the kitchen for our special someone’s dessert; yet I can think of s-o-o-o-o many better ways to spend Valentine’s Day, can’t you?
Going out for dinner on Valentine’s Day? Why not bake up a batch and drop them off at your special honey’s office sometime earlier in the day? Or, surprise your kids with a few just so they know how much you love them, too.
Better yet, bake some for yourself and IF there are any leftover, you now have ideas of what to do with them.
| Linzer Hearts | | Print |
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
- ¾ cup sugar
- 2 egg yolks
- 2 cups plus 1 tablespoon all purpose flour, divided
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ¾ cup raspberry jam, with seeds
- confectioners sugar for dusting
- For the linzer hearts:
- Preheat the oven to 325º. Spray a 10½” x 15½” jellyroll pan or 9" x 13" baking pan with nonstick cooking spray and then line it with parchment paper. Set aside.
- Whisk together 2 cups of flour and the baking powder in a small bowl. Set aside.
- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes, scraping the bowl down as needed. Add the egg yolks and mix well. Add the lemon zest, juice and vanilla extract. Lastly, blend in the flour/baking powder.
- Use the palm of your hand to spread three-quarters of the dough over the bottom of the prepared pan. Pour the jam over the dough. Use the back of a spoon to gently spread it evenly over the top but do not let it touch the edges of the pan.
- The completed pan should have 3 lines of dough going down and 5 lines going across so that the pattern looks kind of like a checkerboard. To accomplish this, take one-half of the remaining dough and divide it into 3 pieces. Divide the other half into 5 pieces. Place all of the pieces on a plate and refrigerate, along with the baking pan, for 25 minutes so that the strips are easier to handle when transferring over the jam.
- Take each of the 3 larger pieces and roll back and forth on a lightly floured board (using the remaining 1 tablespoon of flour) until each piece is the vertical length of the pan. The strips will be thin, so transfer each strip to your hand and then onto the jam. The 3 strips should be evenly spaced over the length of the pan.
- Roll each of the 5 smaller pieces of dough into strips that are the length of the width of the pan and transfer the strips to the pan.
- Bake at 325º for 28-30 minutes. The top crust will be nicely browned and the raspberry topping will be very bubbly. Transfer the pan to a cooling rack and cool completely. Refrigerate for about an hour. Use a 2½” heart shaped cookie cutter to cut the Linzer Hearts by pressing firmly into the pan and lifting the heart as you lift up the cookie cutter.
- Dust with confectioners sugar.
- Betsy's tidbit:
- The pan may be buttered rather than lined with parchment paper.
- Any shape and/or size cookie cutter may be used or you may simply cut the Linzer's into bars.
