These lemon curd linzer cookies are buttery, melt in your mouth, shortbread cookies filled with a delicious creamy homemade lemon curd and will dazzle at your next spring or summer gathering! These cookies are delicate, buttery, crisp, and perfect for celebrations! They are fun to make and delicious to eat. Despite the long process of chilling and rolling out the dough, these cookies are surprisingly easy to make and only require 10 ingredients. Make these for a special occasion and enjoy with friends and family!
Pantry Checklist:
- Unsalted Butter: Since butter is a main flavor here, I would really recommend springing for a higher-quality brand. It is very important to have your butter at room temperature. You can ensure this by lightly pressing your finger on the block of butter. It should slightly leave an imprint. I also prefer to use unsalted butter because salted butters have varying amounts of salt content in them and it is always a good idea to add it on your own and avoid your bakes from being too salty.
- Eggs: Use large eggs and bring them to room temperature before mixing in. Eggs strengthen the binding of your bakes and also add moisture. Having your eggs at room temperature makes it easier to incorporate them and allow them to mix thoroughly in your dough. A good way of doing this is by letting them sit in a bowl filled with room temperature water for around 10 minutes or until they come down to room temperature.
- Granulated Sugar: Sugar acts as a binding agent to your muffins along with adding sweetness. You can use either granulated sugar, powdered sugar or caster sugar to make these cookies. Make sure you only use superfine sugar to get that melt in your mouth texture.
- Vanilla: You must use a high quality pure vanilla extract in your recipes. This helps to add a rich flavor to your baked goods . Pure vanilla extracts are typically dark brown in color. This enhances the flavour of all ingredients and you should never leave this out. You will need a teaspoon vanilla extract for this recipe.
- All purpose flour: I highly recommend weighing all your ingredients using a kitchen scale for accurate recipe results. If you’re using cups, don’t scoop your cup into the flour. Spoon the flour into your cup and level it off with the back of a knife.
- Lemon Juice: I always prefer using freshly squeezed lemon juice for its freshness & best natural flavour to make lemon curd. However, you can even use store bought one instead if necessary.
- Lemon zest: Freshly grated lemon zest adds depth of flavour to your lemon curd. You must not leave this out!
- Kosher Salt: Adding a pinch of salt helps to balance out the flavours in the cookies. I have added sea salt for a little extra flavour however you can use normal iodised salt too.
- Powdered Sugar: You will need powdered of confectioners’ sugar to dust on top of cutout cookies.
FAQ
1. Mix together all the dry ingredients and wet ingredients to make the shortbread linzer cookie dough using a hand mixer, stand mixer or a food processor.
2. Chill it in the fridge for at least one hour or up to a few days.
3. On a lightly floured surface, roll out one disk of dough to ⅛” in thickness. Use a 2 ½” fluted round cutter and a 1″ round linzer cookie cutter or round piping tip. Cut out an even number of solid cookies and cookies with a round cutout.
4. Place all cutout cookie dough on baking sheets in the freezer for 10 minutes. Place the scrap cookie dough back in the fridge for about 15 minutes before re-rolling.
5. Bake the frozen cutout cookies at 350 degrees F for about 10 minutes. Bake the tiny rounds for about 8 minutes. Allow cookies to cool completely on the baking sheet.
6. Repeat with the remaining cookie dough.
To ensure that the linzer cookies maintain their shape in the oven, chill the cookie dough for at least one hour, then freeze the cutout dough for 10 minutes.
Since linzer cookies are meant to be crisp, store them at room temperature in an airtight container covered loosely with aluminum foil.
1. Place the cubed butter and lemon zest in a large bowl.
2. Place a medium saucepan filled with two inches of water over medium low heat. In a medium bowl that serves as a double boiler, whisk together sugar, eggs, egg yolks and salt to combined. Slowly add the lemon juice and stir to incorporate.
3. Place the bowl over the pot with water and heat the curd over medium low heat, stirring often until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Be sure to stir the curd evenly as it cooks, scraping the bottom and sides of the bowl as you go. The curd is done when the mixture is thick and the temperature measures 165 degrees F using an instant read thermometer.
4. Remove the curd from the heat and pour it through a fine mesh strainer into the bowl with the butter and lemon zest.
5. Whisk to combine well, stirring until all of the butter is melted and the curd is smooth.
Bake along with me:
- Step 1: Gather all the ingredients for lemon curd.
- Step 2: Add eggs, sugar, lemon juice and lemon zest to a bowl.
- Step 3: Using the bain marie method or in a double boiler, let the mixture thicken until it reaches 165 degrees F
- Step 4: Remove from flame, mix in softenened butter and allow to cool in a mason jar.
- Step 5: Gather all ingredients to make the cookie dough.
- Step 6: Beat together wet ingredients, add in the dry ingredients and make the dough. Chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
- Step 7: Roll out the dough and cut into circles. Cut out smaller circles in half the cookies.
- Step 8: Place cookies on a lined baking sheet. Chill cookies in freezer for 10 minutes. Bake the cookies.
- Step 9: Add chilled lemon curd on cookies without the smaller circle. Dust the ones with smaller circles with powdered sugar. Keep on top of lemon curd circles to form sandwich cookies.
Secrets to Success:
- Do not over mix the dough. Because we do not want to incorporate much air into the dough, be sure to mix the butter and sugars together on low speed. Mixing at a higher speed for too long will aerate the dough and leave you with cookies that spread too much in the oven.
- Roll the dough before chilling. For best results I like to roll the dough as soon as it’s ready. Roll the dough to 3/8 inch thick between two pieces of parchment paper and then pop it in the freezer for at least 15 minutes before cutting the shapes. Once the shapes are cut, place the cookies on a parchment lined baking sheet and return them to the freezer for 10 minutes before baking them in a preheated oven. The extra chill time will help to prevent any spreading in the oven.
- Do not over bake. For those soft, buttery, melt in your mouth cookies be sure to pull them from the oven when the edges are set and lightly golden brown and the center of the cookie is puffed and pale. The middle of the cookies might seem slightly under baked but the residual heat from the pan will continue to bake the cookies once they are removed from the oven.
- Cool the cookies completely. Be sure to let the cookies cool for 10 minutes on the cookie sheets once removed from the oven. Then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely. Once cooled, dust the tops only with confectioner’s sugar before adding the nutella to the center of the bottom cookies. Then carefully place the top cookie over the nutella cookie, being careful not to smudge the sugar dusting.
- Use the very best equipment and ingredients. Since these cookies require so few ingredients, it’s best to bet on the good stuff! Use the very best and fresh ingredients to get the most out of this recipe. Put in those extra 5 minutes and get your hands on freshly squeezed lemon juice. Truly, there’s nothing like it. Also, make sure not to use a metal whisk while making your lemon curd as it can leave a metallic taste in it. A silicon whisk works perfectly for this.
LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST:
All of the recipes on the blog are thoroughly tested multiple times and carefully designed so that anyone can reproduce these delicious baked good in their own kitchen and enjoy them to the fullest. The only way to make this possible is when anyone can exactly replicate the measurements and temperatures.
- In order to standardise the way ingredients are measured, I highly recommend that you weigh them in grams. Volume measurements are nearly not as accurate and have a lot of scope for errors. To precisely be able to replicate the recipes, all you will need is a kitchen scale!
- Every oven heats up differently. Your oven might be over heating or under heating by around 50 degrees or more and you might not even know. In order to ensure that you are baking at the right temperatures, I highly recommend investing in an oven thermometer!
If you would still like to bake using volume measurements, I mentioned those below. However, I primarily test my recipes in grams and cannot promise the best results if you do so. Trust me, once you’ll start using these tools you’d never want to go back!
I hope you’ll enjoy these lemon curd linzer cookies and don’t forget to bookmark this recipe for later. This recipe for shortbread linzer cookies would make the perfect delight to share with your friends & family!
Happy Baking! x
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Lemon Curd Linzer Cookies
- Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
- Yield: 12 cookies 1x
Description
These lemon curd linzer cookies are buttery, melt in your mouth, shortbread cookies filled with a delicious creamy homemade lemon curd and will dazzle at your next spring or summer gathering!
Ingredients
Lemon Curd
- 3 large eggs, at room temperature
- 150g (¾ cup) granulated sugar
- 80ml (⅓ cup) freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 56g (¼ cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest
- 1 tablespoon corn starch
Cookies
- 218g (1¾ cups) all purpose flour, spooned and levelled
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 170g (¾ cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 100g (½ cup) granulated or caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- powdered sugar, for dusting
Instructions
Lemon Curd
- Place the cubed butter and lemon zest in a large bowl.
- Place a medium saucepan filled with two inches of water over medium low heat. In a medium bowl that serves as a double boiler, whisk together sugar, eggs and salt until combined. Slowly add the lemon juice and stir to incorporate.
- Place the bowl over the pot with water and heat the curd over medium low heat, stirring often until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Be sure to stir the curd evenly as it cooks, scraping the bottom and sides of the bowl as you go. The curd is done when the mixture is thick and the temperature measures 165ºF using an instant read thermometer.
- Remove the curd from the heat and pour it through a fine mesh strainer into the bowl with the butter and lemon zest.
- Whisk to combine well, stirring until all of the butter is melted and the curd is smooth. Allow to chill in the refrigerator for atleast an hour.
Cookies
- Preheat the oven to 350° F and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour and salt. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, cream the butter and granulated sugar until the mixture is fluffy and pale yellow. Add the vanilla extract. Then, add the flour a cup at a time, until you have a crumbly dough that’s starting to come together.
- Turn the dough onto a pastry or cutting board. Press the dough together with clean hands until you have a smooth ball of dough. Cut the dough into two, and flatten each portion into a 1/2” disc. Wrap with plastic wrap, and freeze for about 15 minutes or refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll each disc of dough until it’s 1/4” thick. Cut out an even number of 3” circles with a cookie cutter. Use a small cookie cutter to cut out a shape from half of the cookies.
- Place the cookies 1” apart on the prepared sheets, and bake for 10-12 minutes, until the bottoms and edges are lightly browned. Let cool for about 5 minutes on the pan, and then move the cookies to a wire rack to completely cool.
- Dust the cookies which have smaller circles with powdered sugar generously.
- Once the cookies are cooled, pipe about 1 teaspoon of lemon curd onto the bottom cookies, and then sandwich the cut-out cookies on top. Dust with powdered sugar, and store in an airtight container for up to a week.
- Prep Time: 1 hour
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
- Category: cookies, lemon, spring, summer
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: linzer cookies, lemon cookies, lemon linzer cookies, lemon curd recipe, lemon curd linzer cookies
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