Purple Sweet Potato Linzer Cookies with Macadamia Nut Shortbread
These linzer cookies are made with a macadamia nut shortbread with Okinawan sweet potato jam sandwiched in between.
Ingredients
- 1 cup softened unsalted butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 egg
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup macadamia nuts
- 1/2 cup Okinawan sweet potato jam See notes for substitutions
- additional flour for dusting
Instructions
- Using a food processor, pulse macadamia nuts into a sand-like powder. Be careful not to overdo it or you get macadamia nut butter. You should have around 1/2 cup. Set aside.
- With an electric mixer, cream butter, sugar, and salt.
- Add egg and mix until homogenous.
- Add flour and ground macadamia nuts. Mix until just combined.
- Wrap dough in plastic wrap and stick in the fridge to chill for 15-20 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line baking trays with parchment paper.
- When dough is chilled, sprinkle some flour onto a clean surface to prevent sticking. Roll out dough to about 1/3-1/2" thick, adding more flour as necessary if dough is sticky. Cut out your cookies using cookie cutters. For the cookies in these photos, I used a circular cookie cutter about 1 1/2" in diameter, which resulted in about 48 cookies, making 24 cookie sandwiches. Use a smaller shaped cutter to cut out the center of half of the cookies. Roll out the scraps and repeat until all the dough has been used up.
- Place the cut out cookies onto your baking trays and put back in the fridge to chill for another 15 minutes at minimum. After chilling, bake for 10 minutes or until the bottoms of the cookies are just turning brown.
- Let cookies cool to room temperature. Then spoon about a teaspoon of Okinawan sweet potato jam (or other filling) onto half of the cookies. Top with the remaining half (with the center designs cut out) to complete your cookie sandwich. Keep leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge.
Notes
- If you don't want to use macadamia nuts, you can replace with 1/2 cup all purpose flour.
- Chilling is VERY IMPORTANT for this recipe, especially if you are cutting out designs! I recommend following the instructions to chill the dough prior to cutting and chill again prior to putting it in the oven. If you do not chill this dough, the melting butter will completely flatten your cookie and lose any cut out shapes you have made.
- My homemade Okinawan sweet potato jam is easy and SO GOOD with this mac nut shortbread. It tastes like an Okinawan sweet potato haupia pie in a cookie form. If you really don't want to make the jam, you can substitute with store bought ube halaya instead for an ube linzer cookie. It is similar in appearance, but with a different flavor. For additional ube-ness, you can also add a teaspoon of ube extract to the shortbread dough.