Linzer Tart is an amazing austrian cake. There are a lot of different recipes out there. Taste wise my recipe is close to what I envisioned, though I do want to change some steps and maybe the dough to make it more presentable.
Ingredients
For the listed ingredients I used a normal round cake baking form.
-
200g melted butter
-
3 eggs
-
4cl rum
-
5g salt
-
1.5g ground cinnamon
-
0.5 ground cloves
-
1/2 pack baking powder
-
250g cake flour
-
200g hazelnuts
-
350g red currant jam
Instructions
Start by melting the butter and mixing it with the sugar, egs and rum. Once the sugar fully dissolved, ad the other ingredients (except the jam). Butter a baking form and use 600g of the mixed dough to form the bottom layer.
Presentation
The remaining dough is used for a nice presentation. For this step I cut of one corner of a plastic bag and filled the remaining dough in it. Pressing the dough through the cut out makes it very easy to spread the dough where you want it to be. Start by painting a ring on the outside. I went around twice for a thicker line. Afterward spread the jam over the dough and paint a checker pattern with the remaining dough.
The alternate way of doing that (and if you have the time the way superiour one in my oppinion) is to remove about 200-250g dough and place it on some plastic wrap. Once that is done roll it out thinly (3-4mm). Fully cover it in plastic wrap and place it in the freezer for about 30 minutes. Then cut it into thin stripes and use those to decorate the tart. This way it is also way easier to lay out the border before adding the jam.
In a preheated oven bake it for about 35 minutes at 175 degrees.
Next Time…
- Freezing the dough for the lines on top was great, however one can use way less that I used. roll it out thin, like 3-4mm and freeze it. Those should give the perfect thickness for the pattern after wards.(I used 8mm thick ones and they just covered the whole tart as they spread during baking).
Test version v1
For reference: for this version I used a 28x18cm glass baking form.
Ingredients
-
200g melted butter
-
3 eggs
-
4cl rum
-
250g cake flour
-
200g hazelnuts
-
5g salt
-
2g ground cinnamon
-
1g ground cloves (reduce to 0.5g!)
-
1/2 pack baking powder
-
350g red currant jam
Instructions
Start by melting the butter and mixing it with the sugar, egs and rum. Once the sugar fully dissolved, ad the other ingredients (except the jam).
Note: I tried to separate the egg white, whip it and fold it under the dough later, though the benefit of doing so where not that big.
Butter a baking form and use 2/3 of the dough to form the bottom layer. The remaining dough is used for a nice presentation. Use some of it to form a nice ring on the outside of the baking form. Afterward spread the jam in between. Use the rest of the dough to create a nice check pattern on top of the jam. This is the part where I was really struggling as my dough got warm and very soft, and I was not able to properly handle it (see Next time section for potential options).
For baking, I went with a pretty low temperature of 155 degrees, and a 50 minutes bake. With a normal cake baking form (and not one out of glass) I’m sure one could reduce the time and up the temperature.
Next time:
- reduce the amount of cloves from 1g to 0.5g (updated recipe) as this was too intense.
- either keep the dough cold, and a bit more dry to be able to roll it out and cut it (for nice top layer) or keep it warm and soft and try to spay it on with a cut plastic bag
- use a normal cake baking form next time increase the temperature a bit and shorten the baking time
- note: first try I separated the egg white and whipped it and gently folded it in the dough.
Version 2
This time I did not separate the eggs. There was a bit of difference in texture, but only noticeable directly after baking. After one day the difference was no longer noticeable. Using a cut plastic bag to paint stripes did work very well. Presentation was way better though by far not perfect.
Ingredients
For the listed ingredients I used a normal round cake baking form.
-
200g melted butter
-
3 eggs
-
4cl rum
-
5g salt
-
1.5g ground cinnamon
-
0.5 ground cloves
-
1/2 pack baking powder
-
250g cake flour
-
200g hazelnuts
-
300g red currant jam
Next time:
- reduce baking powder a bit
- 300g jam was too less. 350 as in v1 is better
- try to get better uniformity of the dough and stripes
- temperature can be even a bit higher than 175 degrees.
