So, I did some research and these were what I was able to cobble together. I think they turned out pretty darn well!
Ingredients
- ½ cup vegan butter, brought to room temperature (I was pleasantly surprised – I was able to find this at my local Safeway supermarket)
- ½ cup maple syrup
- 1 t vanilla
- ¼ t salt
- 2 ¼ cups almond flour
- 1 cup (approx.) fruit preserves (I used Bonne Maman 4 Fruits preserves, which I love and I checked and they are vegan and gluten-free)
- Powdered sugar for dusting
Directions
Put the vegan butter into a large mixing bowl and mix until creamy – just a couple minutes.
Add in the maple syrup, vanilla and salt and mix again until well combined.
Finally add in the almond flour and mix until just combined.
Freeze your dough for at least an hour to get it to a consistency where you can roll it out.
Next, you guessed it, roll out your dough until it’s about 1/4 inch thick. Get a circular cookie cutter and cut out as many cookies as you can. Next, get a smaller cookie cutter and cut out the center to half of the cookies.
Note here – even frozen, this dough is REALLY sticky. Like, crazily, annoyingly sticky. What I did was LIBERALLY flour my surface.
I then took half the dough out of the freezer, liberally floured my rolling pin and rolled and cut out pieces as quickly as I could. Whatever scraps were left I balled back up and put back in the freezer for the next round.
Place the dough on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. Just make sure you have equal numbers of the whole cookie and the ones with the center cut out!
Bake at 350 for about 10-12 minutes, or until they start to get a nice golden brown. Take the sheets out of the oven and let the cookies rest on them for a couple minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.
Once cooled, place all the cookies with the center cut out on a sheet of parchment or wax paper, pairing up each whole cookie with a cookie with the middle cut out.
Then, get your whole cookies and place a small amount of preserves in the center. You won’t need as much per cookie as you might think you will, so err on the side of less rather than more, otherwise they’re a mess to eat. Make sure to flip the cookies before you add the fruit, so you’re putting it on the flat side of the cookie.
Place the cookie with the hole on top of the whole cookie with the fruit spread on it.
Dust the cookies with powdered sugar and hand them out to your vegan, gluten-free or just plain hungry friends!
Makes about 20 – 24 linzer tarts.
Ugly Desserts 