Blueberry Almond Linzer Cookies

Note: Everyone says that you can’t mess around with baking the same way you can mess around with cooking, but I would like to present the following success as evidence that sometimes you can!

As a holiday gift, one of my coworkers gave me a jar of blueberry jam from her friend’s farm. This gave me the perfect excuse to make Linzer cookies, which are always so pretty and fancy looking!

I wanted a recipe that started with whole nuts, didn’t call for wheat flour or some sort of processed gluten-free substitute, and wasn’t trying to also be vegan. Well I wasn’t able to find one, so instead I decided to start with Joy of Baking‘s recipe, and just make some adjustments:

– Grind together
— 1c roasted almonds
— 1/4c sugar – they said white, but I used coconut sugar

– Mix together
— 2c flour – they said wheat flour but I used almond flour. I decided since it was cookies and they didn’t have to rise or anything that it might be ok to just do a swap
— Cinnamon
— Salt
— (They also said to add lemon zest but I didn’t have any)

– Beat together
— 1c coconut oil (they said butter but mine was frozen)
— 1/2c sugar – again I used coconut sugar, so it didn’t turn light and fluffy, but I decided that since these cookies weren’t going to be white anyway that it would be ok to use the brown coconut sugar – and way better for you!
— Vanilla
— 2 egg yolks (although we ended up adding in most of the egg white later so you could probably just add in full eggs here)

– Mix all of the above together into a dough. Without the egg white it was pretty dry and I was worried about the dough being too crumbly, especially since I was a little worried about the almond flour substitution. It might have been ok without it, so you can experiment. It definitely turned out well with the egg white, though!

– Refrigerate the dough for a bit – we ended up putting it in the freezer because we were on a deadline

– Roll out the dough to ~1/4inch thickness. To do this I sprinkled a large cutting board with more almond flour, and then I put parchment paper on top and rolled over that – otherwise it was sticking to the rolling pin, since I guess almond flour isn’t as fine as wheat flour
– Cut out the size cookies you want, and then with half of them cut smaller shapes out of the center. For this I used a regular glass and a shot glass.

– Bake at 350*f for ~5-7 minutes until they start to brown a little (they say 12 minutes, but for me that would have been way too long!)

– Let them cool completely, and then make into little sandwiches with your favorite jam! (If you’re just putting them on a plate you can add extra jam to fill up the hole on top, but if you’re trying to transport them this will just make a mess).
– They also say to sprinkle them with powdered sugar, but I didn’t do this – they were plenty pretty and sweet for my taste as-was!

So to recap:
– I used coconut sugar instead of regular
– I used coconut oil instead of butter
– I used almond flour instead of wheat flour (this was the real wildcard)
– I added in egg white in an attempt to compensate
– I adjusted the cooking time
– It totally worked