In 1653 the cookbook of a Veronese countess, Anna Margarita Sagramosa, recorded four recipes with Linz in their titles, the oldest known Linzer torte recipes. Linzer cookies are the torte shrunk to a sandwich: roll an almond butter dough thin, cut pairs of rounds with a window in each top, bake, and fill with preserves. Lemon or mandarin marmalade works in place of raspberry jam.
That manuscript is now kept as Codex 35/31 in the library of the Benedictine abbey at Admont, in Styria, which describes the Linzer torte as the oldest known cake recipe in the world. Austria's tourism board credits a pastry chef, Johann Konrad Vogel, who moved to Linz in 1822 and produced the torte in quantity, with making it the city's emblem. The torte is a nut shortcrust with redcurrant jam under a lattice. The cookie is the same idea in miniature: Sally's Baking calls Linzer cookies an Austrian twist on the torte.
American recipes mostly fill them with raspberry or apricot. Marmalade is a known option, just a less common one. Sally's Baking lists orange marmalade among its suggested fillings, and TeaTime magazine published a whole Linzer recipe built around it.
Linzer cookie recipe with marmalade
Adapted from Alexandra Stafford's Linzer cookies at King Arthur Baking, with the filling amounts guided by TeaTime's marmalade version.
Makes 15 sandwich cookies · Prep 30 minutes · Chill about 1½ hours · Bake 12–15 minutes · Total about 2 hours 45 minutes
Ingredients
- 1½ sticks (170 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- ½ cup (99 g) sugar
- Finely grated zest of 1 lemon, or 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1⅓ cups (160 g) all-purpose wheat flour
- ¾ cup (72 g) finely ground almonds (almond flour)
- ¼ tsp fine sea salt
- ¼ to ⅓ cup (80–105 g) marmalade, for example our Meyer Lemon Marmalade or Mandarin Marmalade
- Confectioners' sugar, for dusting
Steps
Notes
- Dough texture: if the dough turns sticky while you roll, chill it again for about 20 minutes (King Arthur).
- Storage: covered, filled cookies keep about 3 days at room temperature or a week in the fridge (Sally's Baking).
- Freezing: freeze the dough, or the baked cookies filled or unfilled, for up to 3 months, and thaw overnight in the fridge (same source).
- Regular version: use seedless raspberry jam, apricot preserves or lemon curd in the same amounts. If you fill with curd, refrigerate the cookies.
Nutrition (estimate): about 190 calories per sandwich cookie, worked out from USDA values for the ingredients as listed. Brands and portions vary.
Swapping raspberry jam for marmalade
| Usual filling | The swap | What changes | How to adjust |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seedless raspberry jam | Meyer Lemon Marmalade | Gold window instead of red; floral lemon with soft acidity | Use the lemon zest in the dough so the flavors line up |
| Apricot preserves | Mandarin Marmalade | Aromatic mandarin peel with honeyed sweetness | Swap the zest for cinnamon for a spiced version |
| Any smooth jam | Any citrus marmalade | Strands of peel in the filling and a little bitterness | Chop long strands before spreading |
Marmalade is thick enough to hold two cookies together and strong enough to stand up to an almond dough. The peel also adds a bitter edge that raspberry jam lacks.
Should you fill Linzer cookies ahead or at the last minute?
Fill them the day before if you like a softer cookie, and just before serving if you want crunch. The cookies are crisp straight from the oven and at their best on day two, once the filling has softened them, according to Sally's Baking. For crunch, spread the marmalade on just before serving and keep the plain baked cookies layered with wax paper until then, as TeaTime does.
Either way, the baked, unfilled cookies keep well in a tin, so you can bake on a weekend and fill a few at a time through December.
Meyer lemon, mandarin or something darker
Our Meyer lemons are grown by a family farm in Riverside, close to Victoria Avenue. The fruit's mandarin ancestry shows in the jar as a rounded, perfumed flavor, and that suits a dough already scented with lemon zest. It's the jar we call the lemon marmalade for cooks.
Mandarin Marmalade is our most aromatic jar, and its honeyed sweetness pairs well with the cinnamon dough. Our holiday cooking guide picks it for shortbread thumbprints. Spread it thin and stick to the smaller ½-teaspoon amount so it doesn't squeeze out the window.
A darker, more bitter jar such as our Duncan Grapefruit Marmalade makes a Linzer for grown-up tastes; try one sandwich before committing a whole batch. The full range is in the marmalade collection.
Photo by amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash.
