Every Christmas since I can remember, my mother has baked an array of Christmas cookies for our Christmas plates. To this day, each one of us receives our own plate filled with nuts, chocolates, cookies and tangerines. I remember her in the kitchen, preparing all the different doughs and I remember looking forward with anticipation to my favorite cookie – the linzer cookie.
Delicious raspberry jam, sandwiched between two layers of vanilla sugar cookie dough, and dusted with powdered sugar. Soft cookies with a hint of a crunch, combined with tart yet sweet and satisfying raspberry jam, and icing sugar melting on my tongue – heavenly! The tops of each cookie had either one, two, or three circle cut outs, like the cookies pictured above. They were always the first kinds of cookies to go on my and my brother’s plates; even over the chocolate versions!
This year, it was a pleasure to team up with Driscoll’s to play around with the recipe and infuse even more raspberry goodness into my own batch of linzer cookies by adding fresh Driscoll’s raspberries to the dough.
Here they are while assembling…
After dusting with powdered sugar…
and after the powdered sugar disappears into the raspberry jam.
I love how they turned out – so delicious! And the most reliable test; whether or not my husband liked them (he’s a picky eater!). I could barely get them photographed before he was reaching for another one!
After putting some aside for him, I was excited to pack some up as an early Christmas present for Mom. As a special touch, and part of Driscoll’s Made With Love Campaign I decided to wrap them with a little extra love… First in cellophane bags
tied with twine and a sweet tag, “made with love”, by The TomKat Studio, and then tucked neatly inside these adorable gingerbread house candy boxes by Claudine Hellmuth.
Aren’t they super cute!
Mom thought so, and I’m so excited to make more of these for family and friends for Christmas, starting a new raspberry linzer cookie tradition!
If you’re looking for more holiday inspiration, other Made with Love berry gift ideas that can be found on Driscolls.com.
Do you have any favorite holiday treats or traditions?
And if you’d like to make these raspberry linzer cookies too, the recipe is below.
Have fun baking!
xo,
Marian
p.s. I used these cellophane bags to pack the cookies in, and they worked without having a flat bottom to the bag. A little easier to pack would be these flat bottomed cello bags.
Raspberry LInzer Cookie Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups unsalted butter, room temperature
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 3 tsp vanilla extract
- 5 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 cups Driscoll's raspberries
- 1/2 cup raspberry jam
Instructions
- Cream the butter and sugar together in the bowl of an electric mixer on low to medium speed. (Use the paddle attachment). Mix until thoroughly incorporated - for about one minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a plastic spatula and mix again for a few seconds more.
- Add eggs slowly and mix. Scrape down the bowl with your spatula at least once and mix again.
- Add vanilla to mixing bowl. Stir briefly.
- Sift your dry ingredients together. (Flour and salt).
- Add all of the flour mixture to the bowl. Place a large tea towel or two small tea towels between the edge of the bowl and the electric mixer so that the flour won't escape. Mix on low speed for 30 seconds. Remove the tea towels and observe the dough mixing; when it clumps around the paddle attachment it's ready.
- Add the Driscoll's raspberries and mix until just incorporated.
- Roll the dough out between 2 large pieces of parchment paper. Place on a baking sheet and into the fridge for a minimum of 1 hour.
- Roll out the dough further if you need to, and cut out cookie shape - making sure you have an even number of solid circles for the bottom and circles with cut out shapes on top. Place on parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Re-roll scraps and repeat.
- Put cookie dough shapes back into the fridge for 10 minutes to 1 hour to chill again.They will then hold their shape better when baked.
- Preheat your oven to 350°F or 176°C.
- Bake cookies for 8-12 minutes or until the edges become slightly golden brown. The baking time will depend on the size of your cookie.
- Let cookies cool to room temperature and apply jam to the bottom cookie with a butter knife. Put the top of the cookie on and once all cookies are assembled, dust with icing sugar.
- Enjoy!
Notes
Paid Endorsement from Driscoll’s – Visit www.driscolls.com. Recipe, thoughts and opinions are my own.
Marian these are absolutely gorgeous – love the berry twist in the dough!
Would this dough be good for decorating too? Do they keep their shape well?
Hi Julianne,
Yes, they do keep their shape well – I’ll definitely be using these for decorating too.
Hi Marian,
I will definetly do this for Christmas…
How much time can I “store” this cookies? Thank you, Isabela.
HI Isabela,
As long as they’re in a cookie container (air tight) I would say up to two weeks. They probably won’t last that long though. 🙂 You could also make the pieces, freeze them, then, closer to when you serve them, thaw them out and assemble.
Have fun!
Such pretty cookies!
Thank you so much for featuring my gingerbread house boxes!! These cookies look so delicious! Yummy yum yum!!!
Thank you, Claudine! I love your gingerbread house printables! xo
Ohhhh these remind me of my mom’s cookies when I was a little niner 🙂
Such pretty photos..
The filling is important too..I would use my favourite organic raspberry jam for these cookies <3
The gingerbread houses look SO cute! So perfect to give away for Christmas.
Wishing you a sweet Tuesday!
XOXO, niner 🙂
I love Linzer cookies, and just made some for Thanksgiving. My recipe has almond meal and cinnamon in the dough. Yours are gorgeous!
I love the infusion of raspberry into the dough! So pretty and I bet delicious.
Hi ,
these look so lovely i have a question are driscolls raspberries fresh raspberries and is driscolls a name product ,only ive never heard of them ? ( sorry ) x
Hi Julie,
Driscoll’s sells fresh raspberries and other berries. Excellent quality – gorgeous berries! You can find them at many grocery stores in the U.S. and Canada.
The words which are pink in the post above, with the words Driscoll’s in them, or “Made with Love” are links to their site, and here is a link for you as well:
http://www.driscolls.com/?utm_source=Homepage+Link&utm_medium=https://sweetopia.net/&utm_campaign=Made+With+Love+Holiday
Happy baking!
Those look amazing!
Beautiful cookies. Thanks for providing the link for the gingerbread house boxes. Will be buying those.
Do you think I can use strawberries?
Absolutely, chop them fairly small is my only suggestion. Happy baking!
Hi,
Do I mix the fresh berries with the jam and then spread it on the
cookies?
Hi Henya,
I used the fresh berries in the cookie dough, and didn’t mix fresh berries with the jam.
Might be interesting to try – let me know if you do!
How to convert the ingredients into g?
Hi Physalis,
Here are my conversion printables for you:
https://sweetopia.net/2013/06/weight-conversions-for-common-baking-ingredients-free-illustrated-printables/
Gorgeous cookies, Marian!
This looks so pretty! I love the raspberry filling!
I just made these, too – without the traditional shape – for my Christmas platter. Used toasted hazelnuts… mmmmm. But, found that I had to dust before topping them cookie as the jelly/jam did not absorb the sugar. It just sat there. I did use jelly, and that may be the difference… homemade, of course. But, a tip that is important for me as there were a couple of more “demonstration cookies” than I had counted on because of dusting them after sandwiched together.
🙂
V
MMmm, sounds delicious @A Canadian Foodie!
Hello! So I read your comment before trying these cookies so what I did was put a little raspberry jam on a plate and sprinkled it with the powdered sugar to see what happened. I used smuckers jam. It absorbed the sugar almost immediately. I also discovered that if you get clumps of sugar on there it will just sit so what I did was use a knife or fork and gently mixed it in with the jam. They turned out gorgeous!
Hi Bethany,
Good to know, thanks so much for sharing!
This is brilliant. I was scratching my head for new cookie recipes and you ease that for me! Thanks Marian!
Yay! 🙂
beautiful elegant cookies…”spitzbuebe” in swiss!
You did a great job! I cant wait to taste them.
I love the cookie box very much.
ML
Could frozen raspberries be used instead of the fresh? Would they need to thaw and drained before using.
Hi Judy, I haven’t tried the frozen raspberries, but yes, I’m guessing they would need to be thawed and drained first.
Can I leave out the rasberries and keep the rest of the ingrediants the same?
Hi Fiona,
Yes, that works too.
These are lovely Marian. I’ll sure try them for this christmas. (but i’ll be cheating and doing only sugar cookies as i don’t get raspberries in my country! ) I just have a question. Can I stack them up for gift packaging? will the sugar dust get messed? How did you pack it for your mom?
Hi Roshini,
I did stack mine in the packages for my mom, and yes the sugar got a little pressed and a little messy, but the icing sugar did stay on the cookie for the most part. Still looked pretty!
these are so pretty Marian, I would love a big platter of these on my counter right now!
I’ve wanted to make linzer cookies for so long. I love them, but don’t have the cookie cutters. Now, I have to. I love these cut outs and the packaging is of course adorable beyond words!
Luci’s Morsels – fashion. food. frivolity.
Marian, could you please put a link to the type of bags you used to package these cookies. I’m having trouble getting bags that will let me stack cookies flat like yours. Even bags that have flat bases are only 1″ across – thanks.
Hi Julianne,
I’m off to add links to the post above…
Hi again, I’ve put two options in the “p.s.” 🙂 Hope that helps!
Such pretty cookies ~ love the little angel 🙂
I made these tonight Marian, they are absolutely delicious. The fresh raspberries are a genius addition to the sugar cookies, so perfect for Christmas. My dough was a little sticky and I ended up having to add about an extra cup of sifted flour, but they were perfect after that. Thanks for another fabulous recipe. Christmas blessings from Texas,
Mandy
Yay! Glad to hear it!
Blessings to you as well. xo
Beautiful! I have to try these. How thick did you roll out your dough. Thanks in advance.
Hi Robin,
I eyeballed it, so they are not all even thickness (See this post for help on that; https://sweetopia.net/2013/11/how-thick-or-thin-do-you-roll-your-cookie-dough-how-do-you-make-the-dough-even/ ), but they are about 3/4 of a cm thick.
I might go thinner next time – you can get more cookies out of your batch of dough that way! 😀
So about 1/2 cm thick.
Have fun baking!
I really love the soft colors in these cookies- perfectly pretty, Marian!
I love how there is rasberry swirled throughout the cookie! So pretty!
I love Linzer cookies, these are just gorgeous!
I love baking cookies and I love eating linzer cookies, but I don’t love making them! Raspberry jam from the store never tastes as good as the jam inside store/bakery bought linzers! What kind of jam did you use and do you have any suggestions how I could make mine better? Love your cookies by the way, absolutely gorgeous!
This will make great cookies for Valentines as well. Can they be shipped if packed properly in an airtight container? I have heard that they must stay in the refrigerator?
Your thoughts?
These cookies are amazing! I’ve been wanting to make this type of cookie for like 2 years but it went into the “I want to do this but never do file”. So I found your recipe and thought the idea of mixing the fresh raspberries in sounded so delicious. These are the best cookies ever! I wish I could post the pic.
Hi Bethany,
I’m so so glad to hear it! First of all that you tried, and second of all that you love them! Thanks for letting me know!