High Altitude Linzer Cookies with Bourbon Cherry Jam

These classic high altitude Linzer cookies start with a buttery, soft almond shortbread cookie, filled with homemade bourbon cherry jam, and dusted with powdered sugar. The pretty peek-a-boo cutout in the top cookie reveals the jewel-hued jam inside, with the powdered sugar dusting the cookie like freshly fallen snow. These make a beautiful cookie for Christmas!

Looking for more Christmas cookie recipes for the holidays? You’ll love these almond sugar cookie Christmas trees, soft and chewy maple cookies, and stamped chocolate shortbread cookies with coffee icing.

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Why You’ll Love This Recipe

Perfect for Christmas. These really are the most beautiful Christmas cookies, with the jam in the center glistening like jewels, and the soft shower of powdered sugar.

Make Ahead, Assemble Later. Shortbread has a long shelf life and freezes very well. You can make the shortbread in advance, then fill and assemble the Linzer cookies the day you’re ready to serve them.

Beautiful and Versatile. From jam to caramel to fruit butters and chocolate ganache, you can fill these cookies with any flavor you like.

High Altitude Tested. I develop all the recipes on my site for Denver’s altitude of 5,280 feet. If you’re at a lower or higher elevation, please see my FAQs for guidance on adjusting recipes for your altitude.

What is a Linzer cookie?

Linzer cookies, as well as the Linzer torte, are traditional Austrian pastries named for the city of Linz, Austria, and they’re very popular throughout Austria and Germany. The torte is made of a buttery shortcrust pastry flavored with walnuts or almonds, lemon and cinnamon, traditionally filled with red or black currant preserves, and topped with a lattice crust, like a pie. It actually dates back to 1653, making it the world’s oldest known cake recipe, although it wasn’t introduced to America until around 1856.

Similar to the torte, the cookies have an almond shortbread base, with two cookies sandwiched together with jam or preserves inside. It’s common to fill the cookies with raspberry jam, but any flavor works. The top cookie has a “window” cutout, to show the pretty jam inside, with a dusting of powdered sugar on top.

In today’s recipe, I’ve flavored my almond shortbread cookie dough with a bit of cardamom and vanilla bean. And instead of raspberry jam, I filled the cookies with my own homemade bourbon cherry jam.

See the recipe card at the end of the post for the full ingredients list and instructions.

Ingredients

• Flour. All-purpose flour gives the cookies structure and strength.
• Almond Flour. Adds nutty flavor and texture.
• Powdered Sugar. Sweetens the cookies, while the fine texture makes a more tender cookie.
• Salt. Balances the sweetness.
• Spices. Vanilla bean paste (or vanilla extract) and almond extract adds flavor, while a pinch of cardamom nicely enhances the flavor of the almonds.
• Butter. Adds moisture and a rich buttery flavor.
• Milk. Binds the dough together.
• Jam. I used homemade bourbon cherry jam, but any flavor of jam will do.

TIP: Make sure your butter is very cold before making your dough. Cold butter and cold dough makes the most tender shortbread cookies.

Instructions

Make the cookie dough.

• In your food processor, pulse the flour, almond flour, powdered sugar, salt and cardamom until combined.
• With the processor running, drop in the pieces of butter, one at at time, pulsing a few times until the butter is evenly distributed, and the dough is moistened and crumbly.
• Add the vanilla, almond extract and milk, then process until the dough starts to stick together.
• Dump the dough out onto a clean counter and use your hands to finish bringing the dough together, kneading in any stray bits of flour. The dough should be soft, smooth and supple.
• Shape the dough into a flat disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 20 minutes, or up to an hour if the dough seems too soft for rolling.
• Prepare two baking sheets by lining them with sheets of parchment paper.

TIP: If you don’t have a food processor, you can make the dough with a pastry cutter instead, then use your hands to work the milk in until you have a soft dough.

TIP: 1/8 of an inch might seem too thin for rolling the dough, but since they will be assembled into sandwich cookies, you don’t want the cookies to be too thick and dense.

Roll and cut the dough.

• Cut the dough in half, and just work with half at a time. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and dust the top of the dough with flour, too. Roll out to an even thickness of 1/8 inch thick, using more flour as needed to keep the dough from sticking to the counter and your rolling pin.
• Use any size/shape cookie cutters to cut as many cookies as you can, placing the cut cookies 1-2 inches apart on the parchment lined baking sheets. Gather up the scraps of dough, roll them out again, and continue cutting as many cookies as you can.
• Now take your smaller cookie cutter and cut out the centers of half of the cut cookies. You can add the centers to the dough scrap pile to cut more cookies.
• Place the baking sheets with the cut cookies in the refrigerator and chill for 30 minutes. Chilling the cut cookies helps to ensure they don’t spread and hold their shape perfectly while baking.

TIP: Using a 2 1/2 – 3 inch round fluted cookie cutter, you’ll get about 42 cookies from this recipe (which will make 21 sandwiched Linzer cookies.

TIP: This is NOT a cookie that you want to under-bake, since a doughy, under-baked shortbread cookie does not have a pleasant texture. So be sure your cookies are fully baked.

Bake the cookies.

• Preheat the oven to 350F.
• Bake the chilled cookies on the center oven rack for about 8-9 minutes. The tops should be a very pale golden with no dark browning, and you should see tiny flaky layers around the edges. If you (very carefully) turn a cookie over with a spatula, the bottom should have light golden browning, with no appearance of raw or wet dough.
• Cool the cookies for 5 minutes on the pan, then very gently transfer them to a cooling rack to cool completely. Shortbread cookies are delicate when warm, so handle with care. The cookies will initially be slightly crisp around the edges, but they soften as they’re stored and will remain wonderfully soft and buttery.

Assemble.

• Take the bottom cookies and turn them over so the bottom side is facing up. Spread about 1 – 1 1/2 teaspoons of jam onto the bottom cookies, but don’t spread it all the way to the edge.
• Lay out the top cookies (with the centers cut out) and lightly dust them with powdered sugar. Take the top cookies and set them on top of the jam, pressing down gently.

Be sure to read all of my BAKING FAQs where I discuss ingredients, substitutions and common baking questions, so that you can be successful in your own baking!

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use any flavor of jam for the filling?

Yes! There are so many delicious options. Try apricot, raspberry, cherry jam or fig preserves. Be sure to strain out the seeds if your jam isn’t seedless. For fruit preserves with whole chunks of fruit, blitz it a few times in a food processor for a smoother consistency. You can even try apple butter, pumpkin butter, chestnut spread or date paste, as long as they’re thick enough to not run off the cookie. Here is my recipe for bourbon cherry jam.

Salted caramel sauce, dulce de leche, lemon curd or dark chocolate ganache would all make wonderful fillings. I’ve even filled linzer cookies with chocolate hazelnut spread.

Can I make the cookies in advance?

You can bake the cookies in advance, store them in an airtight container, and freeze for up to 3-6 months until you’re ready to assemble them. Wait until the day you’re ready to serve your cookies to assemble and fill them with jam, since the jam will cause the cookies to soften as they sit.  Even soft, they’re still delicious, though.  If you have any leftover filled cookies, store them in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

What’s the best way to give these as gifts?

Since they soften so much once they’re filled with jam, I wouldn’t assemble the Linzer cookies to give them as gifts. Instead, I’d suggest making a “cookie box kit”. You could fill the box with the pre-baked cookies (tops and bottoms), a jar of homemade or artisanal jam, and a cute card with assembly instructions.

What if I don’t have almond flour?

Most major grocery stores will carry almond flour, and you can also find it on Amazon.

Can I make these nut free?

Yes, you can absolutely make them without the almond flour. Here is my classic vanilla bean shortbread recipe without almonds.

Where can I find non-melting powdered sugar?

I’ve bought non-melting powdered sugar on Amazon. You can sprinkle it onto a moist cake or even lemon bars, and it won’t melt, so it stays put very nicely on these cookies. If your cookies aren’t going to be sitting out for a long time, then regular powdered sugar is totally fine, though.

What cookie cutters did you use?

For the cookies, I used a 3-inch round fluted cookie cutter. For the center cutout, I used a 1-inch quatrefoil cutter I found a few years ago on Etsy.

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