Linzer Cookies with Mango Curd
Festive almond shortbread cookies filled with mango curd and dusted with confectioners’ sugar perfect for your holiday table.
Linzer cookies originated in Austria, basically mini version of their Linzer almond torte. Traditionally they are sandwich cookies made with almond flour into buttery shortbread which are then filled with raspberry jam peeking through.
I have made a different variation on Linzer cookies. 1. I have filled them with mango curd. (My favorite)
2. I made them eggless.
You can make them with different nut flour or completely nut-free and they can literally fill up with any other fillings. I am thinking any other jams, store-bought or homemade lemon curd, Nutella, chocolate ganache etc.
I have used snowflake cookie cutter, but you can use any other shapes. You can also use mini cookie cutter of the same shape and cut windows instead of circle. There are so many fun ways to get creative with these cookies.
My shortbread cookie does have almond flour as I love adding it to my bakes and the dough is lightly sweetened balancing out the tartness of mango. No one likes too sweet cookies.
Ingredients used are very basic
Flour – I have used all-purpose flour and almond flour. You can use cashew flour, or any other flour. You can completely swap nut flour for regular flour too.
Butter – Use unsalted butter at room temperature.
Sugar – I have used granulated sugar.
Flavoring – I have used vanilla and cardamom both. If you do not like cardamom flavor, feel free to leave it out. It goes well with mango flavor. You can use almond extract too.
Confectioners’ sugar – It is optional to dust the top of the cookies. They look nice and add a little holiday flair specially this time of the year. But feel free to not dust your cookies or lightly dust them.
Mango Curd – Homemade curd is very easy to prepare. Just keep low heat and keep stirring it. Its such a quick recipe too as it is small batch. You can fill them up with jam or mango butter cream, mango cream cheese cream etc. Mango curd has only one egg, that you can replace by adding more cornstarch and make it completely eggless. However, cornstarch can give out slight taste to some people.
mango Curd 
Cookie cut outs 
After baking 
Cookie upside down and filled
Tips
- Keep the dough cold at anytime while rolling and also before baking them. Do not rush this process. It will be wastage if you bake them right off with chilling. Keep the thickness.
- Before you place the top cookies, first match them with the bottom cookies specially with different shapes of cookie cutters they can mismatch.
- I also kept two trays of rolled cut out cookies separate, so that I remember to create windows or cut out for the top layer.
- Make sure to cool mango curd.
Linzer Cookies with Mango Curd
Ingredients
Cookies
- ¾ cup butter room temperature
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 ¼ cup all-purpose flour
- ½ cup almond meal
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp cardamom powder
- 2 tbsp milk
Mango Curd
- ¼ cup sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1/3 cup + 2 tbsp mango pulp
- 1 tsp lemon zest
- 2 tbsp butter
- ¼ tsp salt
- ½ tsp cardamom powder
- 1 tsp cornstarch
Instructions
Mango Curd
- Take all the ingredients other than butter in a pot and whisk it well. On slow to medium heat, cook the curd by continuously stirring until it comes together or thickens up. Do not leave the mixture unattended and keep stirring. You do not want to scramble the egg. Once it comes together, add butter and stir well until its melted. Let it completely cool down. You can make this a day or two ahead and store it in fridge covered.
- You can also make this in a microwave, by cooking it at 1-minute intervals and stirring every time you take it out at 1 minute interval. Keep doing it until it thickens up and looks cooked.
Cookie Dough
- Take sugar and butter in a mixing bowl, beat them until light and fluffy, scraping bowl as needed. Add vanilla extract and beat until well combined.
- Meanwhile, whisk together flour, almond meal, salt, baking powder and cardamom powder, Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until just combined. Do not over-beat the batter.
- Divide the dough into 2-3 portions and pat each into a disc. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate until its firm for about 1 hour
Shape the cookies
- Remove the dough and let it soften up for few minutes, until it feels soft enough to roll out. It should still feel cold but should not be too hard. On a floured surface, roll one disc of dough into 1/8-inch thickness. Using any cookie cutter of your choice, cut out cookies. Using a spatula or bench scraper to lift cookies, transfer them to parchment lined baking sheet. Gather the scrap dough and re roll it and repeat until all the dough is used. Repeat same thing with the other disc too and from cookies.
- Any given time, if the dough softens up and feels sticky, place it back in the freezer to chill until its firm.
- The cookies that we placed on cooking sheet should be placed in the refrigerator for 20 minutes along with the baking sheet.
- While the first batch of cookies are cooling, roll and shape cookies form remaining dough. For this batch, using the end of a round piping tip cut out a circle in the middle creating a window cut out. Put this batch also to chill for 20 minutes.
Bake
- Preheat oven to 350 F.
- Bake all of the cookies for 10-12 minute, or until the edges are just beginning to brown. Let them cool for few minutes in a baking sheet and then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.
- Place the cookies with the window cut out/holes on a cookie sheet dust confectioners’ sugar over the top. Place a dollop of mango curd on remaining cookies by turning them upside down. Top with dusted cookies.