Last weekend, my daughters and I embarked on a delightful baking adventure with the Squishmallows official baking book. We chose to make “Bethany’s Linzer Love-Heart Cookies,” a charming stacked cookie recipe filled with jam.
The book’s creative approach, naming recipes after Squishmallows characters, added a playful touch. Despite initial skepticism from past experiences with children’s cookbooks, we were pleasantly surprised by the outcome.
The recipe involves creating a dough using a stand mixer, combining dry and wet ingredients. My daughters, seasoned from making decorated sugar cookies during holidays, enjoyed using cookie cutters. We opted for a large oval shape for the base and a smaller oval with a flower cutout for the top.
Our cookies turned out slightly larger than expected, yielding 12 sandwich cookies after discarding a few crisp bases. The girls had a blast assembling the cookies with three different jams. The result was surprisingly delicious—soft cookies with just the right amount of sweetness from the jam. Notably, they didn’t even request icing, a testament to the cookies’ appeal.
I’d rate these cookies a solid 7 out of 10 and would definitely make them again. They’re perfect for a fun family baking session, especially on a rainy weekend.
Bethany’s Linzer Love-Heart Cookies
Makes about 24 sandwich cookies
Ingredients
- 225g (8oz) Unsalted butter, softened
- 100g (3/8 cup/½ cup) Caster (superfine) sugar
- 50g (1¾oz/scant ½ cup) Icing (powdered) sugar, plus extra for dusting
- 3 medium egg yolks
- 1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
- 1 tsp finely grated lemon zest (from an unwaxed lemon)
- 275g (2¼ cups) plain (all-purpose) flour, plus extra for dusting
- ½ tsp baking powder
- Pinch of salt
- 75g (2¾oz) ground almonds (almond meal)
- 4-5 Tbsp good-quality raspberry jam
You will need
- Stand mixer
- 5cm (2in) fluted round cookie cutter
- 2cm (¾in) heart cutter
- 2 large baking sheets lined with baking paper
Instructions
- Beat the butter and both sugars together in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the creamer attachment until pale, light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl using a rubber spatula, then add the egg yolks one at a time, mixing between each one. Add the vanilla and lemon zest and mix again until combined.
- Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into the bowl, add the ground almonds (almond meal) and slowly mix into the creamed mixture until smooth. Flatten the dough into a disc, wrap in cling film (plastic wrap) and chill for at least 1 hour or until firm.
- Lightly dust the work surface with flour, unwrap the dough and roll it out to a thickness of around 3mm (⅛in). Stamp out 48 cookies using the fluted round cookie cutter. Rearrange any leftover dough into a ball, re-roll and cut out more cookies. Arrange the cookies on the lined baking sheets and chill for 20 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to (fan) 150°C/170°C/325°F/gas mark 3.
- Using the heart cutter, stamp out shapes from the middle of one half of the cookies.
- Bake the biscuits in batches on the middle shelf of the oven for 12–14 minutes or until pale golden brown. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on the baking sheets for 2 minutes, then carefully transfer to a wire rack.
- Once the biscuits are completely cold, spread a teaspoon of jam onto the solid biscuits, leaving a 1cm (½in) border all around the edge. Dust the heart biscuits with icing sugar, press on top of each jam-covered biscuit and serve.
Tip: Use apricot jam in place of raspberry, or for a more colorful and flavorful spread use 3 different types of jams to fill the cut-outs.
Storage: The biscuits will keep in an airtight box for up to 4 days.
We are excited to introduce “What’s Cooking,” the latest feature in our Voices section. This new initiative invites you to share your favorite recipes and photos with our vibrant Local News community. We encourage you to submit your culinary creations and join the conversation at [email protected]. Let’s cook up something special together!
