It's nice around the holidays to go to a Christmas cookie baking party. Everyone makes their dough ahead of time, so the host's kitchen doesn't explode in a frenzy of flour and butter. At the end of the night, everyone goes home with a nice assortment of cookies. I thought immediately of the Linzer Cookie recipe for this event--partly because I'd made the Linzer torte and knew it was scrumptious, and also because it is one of the less than 30 recipes left in the cookbook to make. As you may recall, it's a very spicy, nutty, and citrusy dough. We chilled it so we could better roll it out once we got to the party.
Things didn't quite go as planned, on a number of fronts. First of all, the proper Linzer cookie is made by sandwiching jam between two layers of cookie--a smaller cut-out is placed decoratively atop a slightly-larger, but same-shaped base. We didn't have nestled cutters to exactly accomplish this, but we did have some similarly-shaped trees, plus we had candy canes, gingerbread men, and whale cutters. But then we didn't have the heart to attempt the photo-finish layering effect when the cookies came out of our friend's oven looking like this:
Never fear, there was a salvageable tray, though the conjoined mass was better nibbled and crumbled in pieces for ice cream topping:
I chalk the disastrous baking up to cooking in an unfamiliar oven. Turns out the oven hadn't been preheated and so the dough slowly melted across the tray. And perhaps the ugly sweaters and spiked egg nog had the party bunch distracted? In any case, it was still a fun and festive evening. Everyone went home with a variety of cookies--including unidentifiable (but tasty) shapes of Linzer Cookies...
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