My Grandmother's Christmas Cookies: Linecké Kolečka (Linzer Cookies)

My grandmother is a master of Christmas Cookies.  Like all Central Europeans, she makes a wide array of cookies, hides them away around the house for a few weeks, and then presents us with the goodies every time we come for dinner, from Christmas through mid-January.  They are always delicious and everyone claims a favorite.  We are baking our way through all of them together this year and I promise to post all of them.  For starters...Linzer Cookies.  Based on the famous Linzer Torte named after the Austrian city of Linz.

This is an extremely simple recipe.  I recommend using a kitchen scale to measure all your ingredients.  Place your bowl on the scale, zero it out, add an ingredient, then zero it out again, etc.

You will need:
420g flour
280g margarine
140g confectioner's sugar
2 eggs
red raspberry or red currant jam

Beat together your flour, margarine, sugar, and eggs.  If using a standing mixer, use the hook attachment on a low setting.

When everything is completely combined, transfer your dough to a clean, lightly floured surface and knead it by hand for a few minutes until smoothly combined.

Shape it into a large lump and cut off a quarter of it.  Put the remainder it into the fridge to keep it cold.

On your floured board, roll out your piece of dough with a rolling pin, until it is about 1/4" thick.  Lift up each side of your dough and add a little extra flour before you start cutting.

Be sure to keep track of how many whole and holed cookies you cut - you want them to all match up!  Place them on a buttered cookie sheet.

Bake them at 350°  for about 15 minutes, rotating halfway through.  Remove them from the cookie sheet immediately until just barely golden (my grandmother calls them "pink").  Transfer them to a cooling rack or tray or even a box, but leave them out in the open overnight.  

On the following day, lightly spread a whole cookie with jam and gently press on a holed cookie.  

Repeat with all the cookies.  

My grandmother advises baking these a few weeks before Christmas.  According to her, they taste better after a couple of weeks.  She has the willpower to pack them all away until Christmas week, but I don't think it runs in the family.  As we were baking, she told me stories of how her aunt could never manage to hide any cookies from her children that long - they would hunt through the house until they found them, every time!