Spitzbuben – the classic recipe for the beloved Linzer cookies

Beat the soft butter together with the sugar and the vanilla seeds until the mixture becomes light and fluffy. Then add the whole egg and stir the dough until smooth. Now add the flour and salt and knead the mixture into a dough on a lightly floured work surface. Press the finished biscuit dough flat, wrap it in cling film and chill it for at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 170 °C fan. Take the dough out of the fridge in portions and knead it through once briefly — if you divide the dough, you can cut out shapes while the rest stays firm in the fridge. Then roll it out to 3 mm thick, ideally with rolling guides: that way the thickness is even everywhere.

Prepare baking trays with baking paper and first cut out the bases; place them on the lined tray. For the lids you use the same cookie cutter, but with a hole in the middle — use it to cut out the centre too. The lids go onto a separate tray, apart from the bases. Make sure you always have the same number of bases as lids. Bring the offcuts together into a dough; if it has become too soft, wrap it in film and chill it again for 15 minutes before cutting out more. These are the cookie cutters that make classic Spitzbuben.

Bake the biscuits in the preheated oven for about 5 minutes. Afterwards they will still be quite pale — which is exactly how we want them. Now dust the lids, while they are still warm, with a little icing sugar. Then let all the cookies cool completely.

Put a little apricot or raspberry jam into a Piping bag with a Round piping nozzle and pipe it onto the centre of the cooled bases. Of course you can also use redcurrant Jelly, sour cherry jam or whatever you like — or spread half of the biscuits with Nutella or a Ganache. It works without a Piping bag too: simply spread it on.

Place the dusted lids onto the filled bases. Then let the cookies rest overnight at room temperature: this way they draw in a little moisture, the two halves stick together better and the biscuits become tender. After that, it's best to pack them in a maximum of two layers in a biscuit box — and present a few of them proudly on the cookie plate.