Viennese Snowflakes and Linzers



Viennese Cookies


310 g flour
pinch of salt
270 g superfine sugar
227 g butter
grated rind of one lemon
2 large egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract


The old-fashioned recipe uses grated cold butter into the flour. I cut the butter in small pieces and worked it into the flour and the sugar with the tips of my fingers.


Sift the flour in a large wide bowl. Add the sugar. Add the cut or grated butter and work it into the dry ingredients with a wide kitchen knife. Just with fingertips, work the butter until the mixture resembles cornmeal. Do not over work. Beat the egg yolks slightly and add them to the butter mixture. Working with a fork, combine the yolks, knead with hands for few seconds to form a nice glossy dough, wrap in cling foil and leave in the refrigerator to chill for at least one hour.


Roll the dough very thinly - these cookies are supposed to be extremely elegant. Cut the snowflakes out. For the linzers, I used Linzer cookie cutters with interchangeable centres. If you do not have these, use plane or fluted round cutters. Cut out even number of round cookies. On half of the already cut cookies cut small holes, using piping tip or whatever you have handy in your kitchen.


Bake the cookies at 180C convection. Do not leave the cookies in the oven, supervise them closely, before they turn out brown. Golden colour is the one that we are striving for. Some hazel shades would be also nice in some shapes.


I used plum jelly to assemble the linzers. Use anything you like. Some of them could be done with Nutella. Dust with powder sugar for snow effect.





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