Chocolate Butterscotch Linzer Cookies

Happy National Cookie Day! Sparkly cookies with festive windows of butterscotch icing.# 101: Chocolate Butterscotch Linzer Cookies

I am 100% in holiday mode right now! I’ve had the Pentatonix Christmas album on repeat since Thanksgiving. Along with Vince Gauraldi’s “Linus and Lucy,” it’s the best Christmas music around! If you haven’t seen the bonus Christmas episodes of GBBO, drop what you’re doing and go watch them. It’s only two episodes and both are magical.

If you want a little background on the Linzer cookie, check out my previous post where I delved into a more classic version. In place of powdered sugar on these babies, I used pearl dust for a shimmery accent. To be honest, the butterscotch spread is sugary enough without adding more for decoration! Along those lines, the cookie dough itself has more of a rich, bitter chocolate flavor. It uses dark dutch process cocoa to help balance out the exceptionally sweet filling.

Edible glitter (or luster/pearl dust in this case) is such a marvelous thing. The kind I use is a mix of cornstarch, dextrose, and food coloring. It’s safe to eat and satisfyingly shiny.

Isn’t this engraved spoon rad?? My friend got it for me for my birthday and I want to hang it up in my kitchen! It’s way too cute to get dirty.

Anywho, back to the cookies! A friend sent me an article about how people who use the concept of mise en place in all aspects of their lives are more efficient and thorough. Hell yeah! Of course, this picture doesn’t show a full mise en place, just the prep before I measure each ingredient, but still. There is nothing worse than starting a recipe and realizing you don’t have enough butter. In the larger scheme of things it’s not a big deal, but in this tiny baking universe, it’s a downright crisis. May it never befall any of you.

It’s a very dry dough that doesn’t seem like it will every come together, but have no fear. Don’t go rogue and add liquid – these are supposed to be very similar to shortbread so you don’t want to loosen up the dough too much.

Looks like it has a fault line running through it. Truly a Bay Area cookie dough.

Best to roll it out between parchment paper so you don’t have to douse it in copious amounts of flour. Works like a charm!

Lil cuties ready for the oven.

Eh, they’ve got personality. Prue and Paul would not be impressed.

The first filling is a melted tahini chocolate spread and it is delightful. It’s reminiscent of peanut butter and chocolate, but not as sweet.

Make sure to put plenty of filling on the bottom cookie, but don’t put so much on that it ooshes out the sides when the top is pressed on. While extra filling is delicious, you don’t want it to drip on your shirt when you take a bite.