Bakewell Linzer Biscuits

Traditional Austrian Linzer biscuits with a "Bakewell" twist.

Level: Easy

Serves: 12

Prep: 15min. + 1hour chilling

Cook: 8-10 minutes

Ingredients:

115g butter (room temp.)

100g sugar

1 egg

¼ tsp vanilla extract

½ tsp almond extract

160g plain flour

50g ground almonds

1/4tsp salt

160g Sour cherry preserves

Preparation:

Cream sugar and butter together until light and fluffy. Add the add, the vanilla extract, the almond extract, and mix until smooth. Mix the flour, the ground almond and the salt, then bit by bit add the flour mixture to the butter mixture until fully incorporated and it formed a soft dough. Half it, wrap both halves in cling film and put it into the fridge for 2 hours.

Line a baking tray with baking paper and preheat the oven on 175C.

Have 2 different sizes of your biscuit cutter to hand. Take the one half of the chilled dough. Between two sheets of greaseproof paper roll out the dough to 0.5 cm thickness. Use the bigger biscuit cutter to cut out as many shapes as you can. Now take the other half of the dough, roll it out the same way and use the bigger biscuit cutter again to cut out as many as you can, however, now take your smaller cutter and cut into the middle of the biscuit to make a hole in the middle.

Bake the once with the hole in the middle for 8 minutes and the whole once for 10 minutes. Let them cool down completely on a cooling rack. Put some jam on a whole biscuit and put a biscuit with a hole, on top of the jam (like a sandwich). Dust with powdered sugar (optional). Enjoy with tea, coffee or a glass of milk!