Linzer Cookies with Salted Caramel and Flaky Sea Salt

Step-by-step method

At a glance

You're making buttery Linzer cookies with a salted caramel center that needs some care in the kitchen. The trickiest part is getting the caramel right—using a wet caramel method with lemon juice prevents crystallizing, while the dough chills and rests overnight to stay tender. Once baked, these cookies need three days to settle before they're ready to enjoy, with their sweet caramel balanced beautifully by flakes of sea salt in the little window.

1/20

Dissolve the sugar in water

Put the sugar, water and lemon juice in a heavy-bottomed, light-colored saucepan. Heat over medium heat without stirring, just gently swirling the pan.

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150 gram
Caster sugar

45 milliliter
Water

1 gram
Lemon Juice
2/20

Cover with a lid

Once the syrup is clear, cover with a lid for two minutes. The steam washes sugar crystals off the sides of the pan. A single crystal above the surface can crystallize the whole batch.
3/20

Cook to the color of dark honey

Uncover and keep cooking without stirring until the caramel turns golden, the color of dark honey. With a thermometer, aim for 175 °C; without one, you'll know the moment by the nutty aroma.

4/20

Stir in the butter

Take the pan off the heat and stir in the cold butter, a cube at a time. It will sputter, which is perfectly normal.

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60 gram
Unsalted Butter
5/20

Pour in the warm cream

Pour in the warmed cream in a thin stream, stirring. Cold cream would cool the caramel all at once and it would harden into a hard candy.

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100 gram
Whipping Cream 33%
6/20

Season with salt and cool

Stir in the flaky salt and pour the caramel into a wide, shallow bowl. Place it in the fridge and stir every ten minutes. After twenty minutes it will be at room temperature.

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4 gram
Salt
7/20

Cube the butter for the dough

Cut the cold butter into cubes of about 1 cm and return it to the fridge. While the caramel cools, the butter chills too.

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200 gram
Unsalted Butter
8/20

Sift the flour

Sift the flour, starch and salt into a bowl.

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270 gram
All-purpose wheat flour

30 gram
Potato Starch

2 gram
Salt
9/20

Prepare the flavor base

Slit the vanilla pod lengthwise, scrape out the seeds with a knife and rub them into the powdered sugar with your fingers. Don't add lemon zest here, as it would compete with the salt.

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100 gram
Powdered Sugar

1 piece
Vanilla Bean
10/20

Make the crumb

Rub the cubed cold butter into the sifted flour with your fingers, or use short pulses in a food processor, until the mixture looks like coarse, damp sand.
11/20

Bring the dough together

Add the vanilla sugar and the egg yolk and mix only until combined. Then smear the dough once or twice across the work surface with the heel of your hand.

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1 piece
Egg Yolk
12/20

Wrap into a disc and chill

Press into a disc 2 cm thick, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour, ideally overnight.
13/20

Let it soften and roll out

Let it soften for 5 to 10 minutes, then roll out between two sheets of baking paper to 3 mm.
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Cut out the rounds

Cut the shapes close together, making an equal number of bottoms and tops with a window.
15/20

Chill the cut-outs

Put the tray of cut-out shapes in the freezer for 10 minutes or in the fridge for 15 to 30 minutes.
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Bake

Bake at 175 °C for about 8 to 10 minutes, until the edges are just starting to turn golden.
17/20

Let cool

Leave on the baking sheet for 3 to 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely.
18/20

Fill with caramel

Spoon the cooled caramel into a piping bag with the tip snipped off. Pipe a dot in the center of each upturned bottom cookie, about a third of a teaspoon. It spreads by itself when you top it.
19/20

Add salt to the window

Top with a cookie with a window and place three or four salt flakes in the window while the caramel is still sticky. Don't dust with powdered sugar, as it would overpower the salt.

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2 gram
Salt
20/20

Let them rest

Store in a tin, layering the cookies between sheets of paper, and let them rest in a cool room for at least three days.

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Linzer Cookies with Salted Caramel and Flaky Sea Salt

Name: Buttery Linzer Cookies with Salted Caramel
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 4907 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Austrian
Ingredients: 8 gram Salt; 1 gram Lemon Juice; 270 gram All-purpose wheat flour; 30 gram Potato Starch; 100 gram Powdered Sugar; 1 piece Vanilla Bean; 150 gram Caster sugar; 1 piece Egg Yolk; 45 milliliter Water; 260 gram Unsalted Butter; 100 gram Whipping Cream 33%

everydaybyyumsto

Prep 30 min Cook 25 min

Plus overnight of resting (not counted in active time)

11 Ingredients

20 Steps

Hard Difficulty

Equipment

What you'll need besides the ingredients.

Sugar thermometer optional

Baking paper

Baking sheet

Cooling rack

Piping bag

One Way Piping Bags 30x17 cm, 100 Pack 17 × 17 cm · 100 pcs per pack

One Way Piping Bags 36x20 cm, 100-Pack 20 × 20 cm · 100 pcs per pack

Sieve

What's in it?

1078 kcal

Calories

120 g

Carbohydrates

64 g

Fats

10 g

Proteins

The nutritional information is an estimate and may vary based on the specific ingredients used.

About this recipe

A tender, buttery round cookie with thick salted caramel inside and a few flakes of salt in the little window, sparkling on your tongue for a moment 🧂 After jam, caramel is the best filling for a Linzer cookie, but it comes with two catches: it burns easily and it crystallizes easily. You can sidestep both by making it as a wet caramel. The sugar dissolves gently first and only then starts to brown, so it heats evenly and you don't end up with half crystals and half caramel in the pan. A teaspoon of lemon juice is your insurance against crystallizing, and a lid left on for two minutes steams the sugar crystals off the sides of the pan. I leave lemon zest out of the dough so it doesn't compete with the salt. And don't dust these with powdered sugar: salt and sugar on the same cookie cancel each other out. So let's make caramel 💜

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Step-by-step method

At a glance

Dissolve the sugar in water

For this step

Cover with a lid

Cook to the color of dark honey