In Hungarian culture, on a wedding day, you walk the Towns main road to the Church where you’re getting married and your family hands out baked goods to anyone who wishes you well. A little different here in Canada, but I really wanted to include a bit of that Hungarian tradition in my own wedding day, so I made these beautiful delicate cookies for our groomsmen and bridesmaids to enjoy the morning of our wedding, along with a traditional Hungarian sour cherry cake. The real name for the cookies are Linzerkoszorú, but since the wedding, we have begun calling them wedding cookies, and wedding cookies they shall stay! These cookies were a mainstay in our Hungarian household and were always made for special events. I would get so excited knowing that there would be a big pile of these at Christmas or Easter. They’re quick and easy enough to make that they don’t need to be reserved for a special occasion and you can make them whenever feels right to you!
Ingredients
300 grams Flour
200 grams Butter or Margarine
100 grams Powdered Sugar
Zest of ½ Lemon
1 pack Vanilla Sugar
1 Egg Yolk
Jam of your choice (peach or apricot are my favourites!)
Directions
In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the flour, sugar, lemon zest and vanilla powder until evenly combined. Add your butter or margarine and your egg yolk and beat on medium-high until light and fluffy.
Once combined, wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour.
This dough is very delicate, especially if you use margarine and not butter. Place a piece of parchment paper on your counter and dust with flour. Put your dough on top of the parchment paper, dust the top with more flour and roll it out until it’s about 1cm thick. Like I said, very delicate dough.
Using a cookie cutter, cut out as many shapes as your piece of dough will fit. I like to use flowers for these cookies, but any shape will work. For half of the cookies, cut out a smaller shape in the middle so your jam can peak through once you assemble.
Carefully, remove the excess dough from the centre of the cookies and around the outside of the cookies. Knead the leftover dough into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap and put it back in the fridge while this round bakes. You can continue rolling out any excess dough and cutting out cookies until there's no dough left!
Bake your cookies at 350℉ for 10-ish minutes. At around the 9 minute mark, begin checking on them. You want them to have a little colour, but as soon as they start to darken, you have to take them out. You can’t let these little babies burn. Sometimes that means taking a few cookies out before the rest are done and that's okay.
Once out of the oven, transfer to a wire rack and let them cool completely. If you’re going to make your own filling, do that while your cookies cool. Personally, I like to use fresh peaches, either finely chopped or pureed, with some lemon juice and a dash of cinnamon. You can use any jam you would like.
Once the cookies have cooled, add jam to the whole cookies, and place the cookies with the centres removed on top. Add a light dusting of powdered sugar and you’re done!
Obviously, these cookies are wonderful eaten right away, but they are even better after a day or two when the jam has been soaked into the cookies and they’re nice and soft. Ask any Hungarian grandma and you’ll know these get made days before an event so they’re eaten at their prime (if they last that long!!).
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