Linzer Tart Cookies
By Liza Huber of Sage Spoonfuls
My father is from Austria and always made Linzer Tart cookies for us every Valentine’s Day—a tradition I now continue with my own family.
Ingredients (yields about 1 dozen cookies)
1/2 cup skinned, slivered almonds, toasted
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp. finely grated lemon zest
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. almond extract
1 cup unbleached, all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup raspberry jam, room temperature
Confectioner’s sugar for dusting
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees, spread the almonds on a baking sheet and place it on the center rack. Roast for 3 minutes, rotate almonds and roast for another 3 minutes. Remove from the oven and put the almonds into a bowl to cool. Then, pulverize them in a food processor.
Mix the butter, sugar, egg yolk, lemon zest, vanilla extract and almond extract with an electric mixer until smooth and creamy. In a separate mixing bowl, sift together the flour, cinnamon and salt. Add the ground almonds and stir to
combine. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Stir to combine. Turn the dough out on a clean work surface. Separate into 4 equal parts, wrap each in
plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour.
Line 2 baking sheets with unbleached parchment paper. Remove one portion of dough from the refrigerator and place between two pieces of parchment or wax paper. Roll with a rolling pin until it’s 1/4” thick. Cut out cookies using a cookie
cutter. Transfer cookies to baking sheets. Repeat with remaining dough. Using a smaller cookie cutter, cut out and remove the center of the cookies.
Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool. Assemble by spreading a thin layer of raspberry jam onto the bottom cookies and dust the top cookies with confectioner’s sugar. Place the cut outs on top of the solid cookies. Enjoy!
As a parent, I love when I find small moments to illustrate “The Golden Rule.” That’s why I love the book, Fill A Bucket: A Guide to Daily Happiness for the Young Child by Carol McCloud, Katherine Martin & David Messing. I designed a kids’ craft project that I thought was a nice complement to the book’s feel-good message.
Instructions
1. Find a bucket. (We found ours in the gardening section of our local hardware store.
2. Decorate the outside of the bucket with hearts using stencils, free-form shapes or even anatomical hearts from old books.
3. Cut out and decorate hearts from colored construction paper to fill your bucket.
4. Write messages on the hearts (see below).
5. Have your child give out the hearts from their Bucket of Love so that they can fill other people’s buckets!
Here are a few examples of things you can say to fill someone’s bucket with good feelings:
“I love you.”
“Would you like to play with me?”
“I really like your drawing.”
“You make me laugh.”
“Thank you!”
