Iced Lemon Curd Linzer Cookies

Iced lemon linzer cookies, made with soft and buttery lemon shortbread, filled with lemon curd, and dipped in sweet lemon icing. These sunny lemon cookies will make your taste buds dance with happiness!

You might also love these high altitude recipes for baked lemon sugar cake donuts, Italian lemon ricotta cake, and lemon cupcakes.

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Why You’ll Love This Recipe

Fresh and Lemony. With fresh lemon zest in the cookie dough, the creamy lemon curd filling, and lemon juice in the icing, each lemony bite of these cookies is pure bliss.

Stays Fresh for Days. This is one of those treats that actually gets better by the second or third day. After filling and icing my cookies, I let them sit overnight to cure the icing. The cookies became wonderfully soft and tender from the lemon curd filling, and I couldn’t stop eating them. They’ll last for days at room temperature, and several weeks in the refrigerator.

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. Since these lemon linzer cookies don’t contain any leavening, they will work at any altitude, though.

Equipment and Tools

• Food Processor or Pastry Cutter. To make my lemon shortbread cookie dough, I prefer to use a food processor, which makes the task so quick and easy. If you don’t have one, you can make it in a bowl, cutting in the butter with a pastry cutter, but it requires a bit more effort.
• Rolling Pin.
• Baking Sheets + Parchment Paper.
• Cookie Cutters. You can buy Linzer cookie cutter sets, but I just use a 2 1/2 inch round fluted cutter, with a 1-inch cutter for the “window” in the top cookie. The shape of the smaller cutter is called “quatrefoil”, and I believe I found mine on Etsy several years ago.

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

Ingredients

• Flour. All purpose flour gives the dough structure and strength.
• Powdered Sugar. Sweetens the dough, while the fine texture makes the cookies more soft and tender than if you used granulated sugar. Also used to sweeten and thicken the lemon icing.
• Salt. Balances the sweetness.
• Butter. Gives the dough a rich flavor, and tender, flaky texture.
• Lemon Extract. Adds a touch more lemon flavor to the cookies.
• Milk. Moistens and binds the dough together.
• Lemon. You’ll need the zest of the lemon for the cookie dough, and the juice for the icing.
• Meringue Powder. The icing is basically a royal icing, and the meringue powder helps to set and harden the icing so it doesn’t stay soft and sticky.
• Lemon Curd. For filling the cookies.

Instructions

Make the cookie dough.

• In your food processor, pulse the flour, powdered sugar, salt and lemon zest to combine. With the processor running, drop the butter down the chute, 1 tablespoon at a time, then process until the butter is evenly distributed and there are no visible chunks of butter.

• Add the lemon extract and the milk, and process the dough until it comes together into a ball.
• Dump the dough out onto a clean counter, and knead in any stray floury bits. Shape the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

• Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
• On a lightly floured counter, roll the dough out to an even thickness of between 1/4-1/8 inch thick. Cut as many cookies as you can with your 2 1/2 inch fluted cutter, and place the cut cookies on the baking sheets, spaced 1 1/2 inches apart.
• Gather up the scraps, roll the dough out again, and continue cutting as many cookies as you can.Use the 1 inch cutter to cut out the centers of half the cookies. You should be able to cut about 30 cookies (15 bottoms and 15 tops).
• Place the pans in the refrigerator and chill for 20 minutes while you preheat the oven.

Bake the cookies.

• Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Bake one pan of cookies at a time (keeping the other pan refrigerated until needed) for about 10 minutes. If you carefully turn one of the cookies over, it should be pale golden brown underneath, with no appearance of raw or wet dough.
• Note: While these cookies do not spread, they can sometimes puff or bubble up in places on top of the cookies, simply from the water in the butter evaporating and creating pockets of steam. Simply use the flat bottom of a spatula to gently press the cookies flat again while they’re hot.
• Cool the cookies on the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely before filling and icing.

Baker’s Note: If you choose to dust your cookies with powdered sugar, instead of dipping them in icing, dust the top cookies with powdered sugar before placing them on top of the lemon curd to make a sandwich.

Fill with lemon curd.

• Take the bottom cookies (without the holes in the middle), and turn them over so the bottoms are facing up.
• Use a small offset icing spatula to spread about 1 1/2 teaspoons of lemon curd onto each cookie, stopping 1/8 inch from the edge.
• Place the top cookies on the lemon curd to make a sandwich.

Dip in lemon icing.

• In a bowl, combine the powdered sugar and meringue powder. Stir in the lemon juice. The icing should be opaque but easily drizzle off a spoon.
• Take the sandwich cookies, and carefully dip the top cookie into the icing. When you do this, you need to be careful not to dip it too heavily, or the icing will get onto the filling in the middle, and will run down the sides of the cookie. Just lightly dip it so that the top of the cookie is barely submerged in the icing and shake off the excess icing. While you have the cookie upside down, you may need to use a toothpick to pop the “bubble” of icing stretching across the center hole.

• Turn the cookie right side up and set it down to dry. If there are any small bubbles in the icing, use a toothpick to pop them so that the icing is nice and smooth.The icing will dry to the touch in about 15 minutes, but will stay soft underneath the surface for several hours.
• My recommendation is to let the cookies dry on a baking sheet for about 4 hours. Then, store them in a single layer in a large airtight container for 12-24 hours, to let the icing fully cure (and to allow the lemon curd to soften the cookies).
• Once the icing is cured, the cookies will be perfectly soft (but not too soft), and can be stacked without ruining the icing.

Storing your cookies.

• Store the cured cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days, or in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.
• The cookies can also be frozen for up to 3-6 months, although the icing can develop little white patches when the cookies are frozen. This doesn’t affect the taste, only the appearance
• If you’re stacking the cookies, separate each layer of cookies with a sheet of wax paper.

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

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 usually 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.

I have a few different linzer cookie recipes on my site:

• Linzer Cookies with Bourbon Cherry Jam. In this recipe, I flavored 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.
• Chocolate Caramel Linzer Cookies. Soft chocolate cutout sugar cookies, dulce de leche caramel filling, and chocolate royal icing. These make a delicious variation on classic linzer cookies, and you’ll love the combination of the sweet dulce de leche with the rich chocolate cookies.
• Chocolate Hazelnut Linzer Cookies. Vanilla sugar cookies filled with creamy Nutella.
• Valentine Linzer Cookies. Red sugar cookies with a heart cutout, sandwiched with a swirl of vanilla bean buttercream. The buttercream rosette peeking through the heart cutout looks so pretty.

What kind of lemon curd do you use?

I usually use Wilkin & Sons Tiptree Lemon Curd, or Mackay’s Lemon Curd.

Do you have a homemade lemon curd recipe?

This homemade lemon curd is wonderful.

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