Date Completed: 12/27-29/2021

Spring is here! Can you think of a better time to talk about the Christmas Cookies chapter of America’s Test Kitchen The Perfect Cookie? I sure can’t!

I did not meet my goal to catch up on posts by the end of February, but I’m setting a new goal: get all of them written in April! I have these cookies and seven other recipes to share.

These beauties are Black Cherry and Chocolate Linzer cookies. They’re from the Christmas Cookies chapter, and I made them look Christmas-y with a Christmas tree cookie cutter. If you changed the cutout shape, though, I think these would be delicious anytime!

Full disclosure: my first note about these cookies reads “SOFT dough! Ahhh” — they were an absolute pain to make! Read on to relive it with me.

Even in the first picture the dough looks soft and sticky. This caused many problems. And many experiments to help. The picture on the right was taken just prior to me scraping up all of that dough and starting again because it wouldn’t release from the counter.

I ended up attempting to roll out the dough between two sheets of parchment paper as suggested in the recipe. I’ve heard this method many times and figured it was worth a shot.

Wrong! Evil method!

The parchment paper is slippery so your rolling pin will roll all over the place. The top parchment separates from the bottom parchment. It also crinkles and makes very ugly patterns in the dough - yuck! I attempted to tether down the paper with Scotch tape and found that to be ineffectual. I made more progress with clear packing tape, but still felt extremely frustrated.

The problem was that even after I got the dough rolled out, it was so soft that it wouldn’t hold its shape when I attempted to to cut it out and transfer to the cookie sheet. To solve for this, I started working with the dough in two batches. I kept one on a large cutting board and the other on the back of a cookie sheet. Anytime one piece of dough became too soft I transferred it to the refrigerator to harden and took the other piece out. This continued for some time.

Have I convinced you to make this recipe yet? You now understand why the “date completed” on this is actually three calendar days. I had to mentally recover!

After getting the initial circles cut out, I also created the cutouts with a smaller cutter. The pictures in the book showed a smaller fluted circle. I didn’t have a similar cutter but the little tree made a very festive replacement! By this point I was rolling with my refrigerator method and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

After all the trouble I went through with this dough, there was no way I wasn’t also baking the little cutout trees as well. They went on the baking trays with everything else and straight into the oven!

After baking and cooling the cookies, we get to the fun parts! In real time this occurred the following evening.

The bottom cookie is covered with a generous spoonful of melted bittersweet chocolate chips. The chocolate sets up very quickly at room temperature. Atop the chocolate goes two teaspoons of black cherry preservers - yum!

You can see we left a little space around the edges so that the top cookie could squish the preserves down without losing any out the sides.

One thing I loved about this recipe: there was exactly enough preserves in the jar to make the cookies.

Here’s what happens when you attempt to sift powdered sugar onto a cookie with your nondominant hand while taking a photo with the other hand. Not the most elegant result.

At this point I was also wondering how photos of Linzer cookies always show the exposed preservers in the middle without any powdered sugar. I was curious if other people sprinkled carefully around the preserves or if they put additional preserves on top after sprinkling the powdered sugar.

As it turns out, the powdered sugar dissolves straight into the preserves within a few minutes of sprinkling. Mystery solved!

Taste Report:

Want to know the dangerous part of an infuriating recipe like this? When the taste is so delicious that you just might have to make them again!

And it wasn’t just the filling that was delicious. That would have been too easy - just make a simpler cookie and fill it with the chocolate and black cherry preserves.

No, the cookie itself was absolutely wonderful. So festive. So delicious. So almost worth the trouble?

The dough is flavored with both ground cinnamon and almond extract. Of course, I love each of those flavorings by themselves in cookies. But together they are game-changing. I could not believe I hadn’t heard of the combination before. Every bite was truly delicious.

I can’t forget to mention the perfect complement offered by the bittersweet chocolate and the black cherry preservers. A perfectly scrumptious bite!

I didn’t have enough preserves to add any to the mini tree cookies, but I did fill them with the chocolate. The result: an “elevated” Milano cookie. Sign me up!

Even at the time, I noted that there is nothing especially Christmas-y about the taste of these cookies. They would be wonderful in any season. Just make sure you’re mentally prepared for a battle with that dough!