Raspberry Valentines Linzer Cookies Recipe

A light and buttery raspberry and almond shortbread style cookie. Naturally pink and with a delicious raspberry jam filling. Perfect for Valentine's Day or any day of the year!

These Linzer cookies are very much like a thin shortbread and they are made with freeze dried raspberries and almond flour so they have a very light and deliciously delicate texture. The freeze dried raspberry is what gives the cookies their naturally pink colour.

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;

200g plain flour

100g almond flour or ground almonds

30g freeze dried raspberry powder + 1 tsp extra for dusting

90g granulated or caster sugar

200g vegan block butter

1 tbs icing sugar for dusting

10 tsp raspberry jam

You will also need; a mixing bowl, baking tray, baking paper, rolling pin, large and small heart shaped cookie cutters, sieve, small bowl

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Method

1. Make your cookie dough by adding all the dry ingredients into your mixing bowl, flour, ground almonds, freeze dried raspberry powder and sugar

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

3. 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

4. The dough is very soft, so wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill it in the fridge for at least 20 minutes to make it easier to roll out

5. Pre heat the oven to 180°c and line your baking tin with baking paper, this will make sure your cookies do not stick

6. Once your dough is chilled and firmer to work with, lightly flour your work top and roll out the dough to around 5-6mm thick

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

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

9. Bake the cookies for around 10-12 minutes at 180c until they are just beginning to turn lightly golden

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

11. Once the cookies are cool, place a tsp of jam onto each plain heart cookie and use the back of the spoon to spread it out

12. Place one of the little heart cut out cookies on top to make the sandwich cookie

13. Repeat until all the cookies are filled with jam and sandwiched together

14. In a small bowl, add 1 tsp freeze dried raspberry powder and 1 tbs icing sugar and mix together to make a raspberry sugar dusting

15. Use the sieve to dust the cookies to finish

16. 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 could swap the freeze dried raspberry powder in the recipe for strawberry or blueberry to make different flavour cookies

• All my freeze dried fruit powders and pieces are from Honeyberry; http://www.honeyberryinternational.com/?ref=clemievegancake

• If you don't have any heart shape cookie cutters, you could use circles or stars instead - they'll still taste delicious!

• These are my heart shaped cookie cutters; https://amzn.to/3LTlq2L