Chocolate & Hazelnut Linzer Cookies Recipe

A chocolatey twist on a Christmas classic biscuit! A buttery and crisp chocolate almond shortbread with a creamy hazelnut filling.

These Linzer cookies have a delicious light texture with a rich chocolate flavour. The sweet hazelnut spread adds a creamy filling and contrasts to the crunchy chopped hazelnuts on top.

This recipe makes around 10 sandwich cookies. They will stay fresh for around a week in an airtight container or you can freeze them for longer.

Makes 10 sandwich cookies

Cookie ingredients;

180g plain flour

100g almond flour or ground almonds

30g cocoa powder

90g granulated or caster sugar

200g vegan block butter - not spreadable!

Handful of chopped hazelnut for decoration

1 bar of Ombar Blonde or similar vegan white chocolate

10 tsp of Rhythm 108 Golden Blonde spread or a similar sweet spread like Biscoff or vegan Nutella

You will also need; a mixing bowl, baking tray, baking paper, rolling pin, circular cookie cutter and small star shape cutter, clingflim, spoon, small microwaveable bowl, piping bag

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Method

1. Pre heat the oven to 180°c

2. Line your baking tin with baking paper, this will make sure your cookies do not stick

3. Make your cookie dough by adding all the dry ingredients into your mixing bowl, the flour, ground almonds, cocoa powder and sugar

4. Add the vegan butter and use your fingers to crumble the butter into the dry mixture

5. Once the mixture looks like breadcrumbs, use your hands to bring the dough together. Try not to overwork the dough as this will make your cookies have a tough texture

6. The dough is very soft, so wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to make it easier to roll out

7. Once your dough is chilled and firmer to work with, lightly flour your work top and roll out the dough to around 5-8mm thick

8. Cut out your circle shapes, making sure you have enough to make both halves of each sandwich. I got 20 circles out of the dough, which made 10 sandwiched cookies

9. With half of the circle shapes, use your small star cookie cutter to cut out a little star in the middle of the circle. These will become the 'tops' of each sandwich cookie

10. Bake the cookies for around 12 minutes at 180c until lightly golden

11. The cookies will be soft to touch while they are hot, so leave them to cool before sandwiching together

12. Once the cookies are cool, place a tsp of Rhythm 108 Golden Blonde spread onto each plain circle cookie and use the back of the spoon to spread it out

13. Place one of the star cut out cookies on top to make the sandwich cookie

14. Repeat until all the cookies are filled with spread and sandwiched together

15. Melt your bar of Ombar Blonde by heating in a the microwavable bowl for 30 second burst, stirring inbetween

16. Using a spoon or piping bag, add a drizzle of the melted chocolate to each sandwich cookie

17. Sprinkle a pinch of chopped hazelnuts onto the chocolate drizzle for added decoration and crunch

18. Leave until the chocolate is set, then eat and enjoy!

Tips & Tricks!

• This recipe needs a block style vegan butter as a spreadable butter will make the dough too wet. I used Flora unsalted black butter.

• You can fill this biscuits with any sweet spread you would like. I used Rhythm 108 Golden Blonde, but Biscoff spread or vegan Nutella would also make a yummy filling! https://amzn.to/4iZANTu

• I used Ombar Blonde for my white chocolate drizzle, but any vegan white, 'milk' or dark chocolate would also taste delicious. https://amzn.to/48Dvaab

• I used a small metal PME star cutter for the cutout shapes. Here's a similar star cutter set; https://amzn.to/44tYLQR

• I used these circle cookie cutters; https://amzn.to/44seUGx