Ina Garten’s Christmas Linzer Cookies Are an Elegant Barefoot Contessa Holiday Favorite
Ina Garten’s favorite holiday cookie is a Christmas classic. Her easy linzer cookies recipe takes simple shortbread and gives it an elegant twist, with a window that shows off a jam filling.
Ina Garten said linzer cookies are her favorite Christmas cookie
During a December 2020 interview with Katie Couric, Garten was asked about her favorite Christmas cookie. The Barefoot Contessa star is a fan of cookies that combine raspberry jam and shortbread together.
“I make these linzer cookies that are shortbread with raspberry jam in the middle, I make thumbprint cookies that have jam in the thumbprint … that’s my favorite combination,” Garten explained.
She added, “Actually what I do is I take that one basic dough, the shortbread cookies” and it produces a variety of different options. “From one dough, you can make all different kinds of cookies,” Garten noted.
The ‘Barefoot Contessa’ star’s linzer cookies are easy to make
Garten demonstrated how to make linzer cookies on an episode of Barefoot Contessa. She was making them for friends and cut out playing card-themed shapes as the windows but at Christmas, it’s typically a cutout circle on the top cookie.
“They’re not really traditional linzer cookies — they’re shortbread cookies with raspberry jam in the middle,” she explained.
Garten creamed together butter, sugar, and vanilla. Then she added flour and salt into the butter and sugar mixture while the mixer was running at low speed. Once the dough was combined, she put it on a floured board and shaped it into a flat disc. After chilling it in the refrigerator for 15 minutes, Garten rolled out the dough.
“So what I’m going to do is cut out small rounds as the bottom of the cookie and then I’m going to put the top on with a cutout and you can see the raspberry jam that’s in the middle,” Garten explained. “It’s going to look good, it’s going to taste good.”
After cutting out the cookies, she placed them on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
Garten gives the cookies a beautiful finishing touch
Garten used a small cookie cutter to cut out the window in the top. “So each of the tops of these cookies is going to have a cutout,” she explained. “So the bottom of the cookie is going to have raspberry jam and then when I put the top on you’ll see the raspberry jam in the cutout. It’s going to be great.”
Garten chilled the linzer cookies for 15 minutes, then baked them in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 10 to 15 minutes.
To assemble the linzer cookies, she placed jam on the bottom cookie, then dusted powdered sugar on the cookie with the small window, and placed it on top of the jam.
The full recipe is available on the Food Network website.
