This was
Linzer Torte, a dessert served after wonderful
lamb shanks.
I had made up my mind to make this Austrian pastry for this christmas months ago, more precisely in February when J surprised me with
Valentine Linzer Torte from L.A. Burdick. I immediately fell in love with the lovely torte - warm spicy, nutty, buttery pleasant crust with bright ruby red of raspberry jam. It was beautiful, tasty, very festive.
I had known
Linzer Torte and seen recipes on baking books and foodie blogs, but somehow hadn't paid a serious attention on it until then. The valentine's day experience opened my eyes. According to wiki,
Linzer Torte is "a holiday classic in the Austrian, Hungarian, Swiss, German, and Tirolean traditions and often eaten at Christmas." Aha! I got a plan for Christmas - create my first
Linzer Torte. I had been looking forward to this holiday season since the Valentine's day.
Luckily I had a trusted recipe of
Linzer Torte from one of my favorite baking recipe books, written by a Japanese professional pastry chef. She is a master of European baking techniques. She studied and tasted various types of
Linzer Tortes in Austria while her favorite
Linzer Torte was one that she happened to eat at a cafe in Paris, which had a lighter crust and smoother jam than those in Austria. So, her recipe was built on traditional recipes with a twist from her experience in Paris. For example, chopped toasted hazelnuts at the bottom of the crust was not traditional, but crunchy nuts was amusing each bite.
Another example was creaming butter and sugar until it becomes very fluffy as if you are making a feather-light sponge cake. According to her recipe, this step would create a light and delicate crust that melts in mouth rather than the cookie-like short, crumbly crust of traditional
Linzer Torte. On the other hand, the recipe kept good traditional aspects. One of traditional ingredients for the crust was sponge cake crumbs. I set some end pieces of sponge cake aside when I made German lemon cake,
Zitronensahnetorte some weeks ago and froze them for this project. In fact, the lemon cake was practically Step 1 to complete
Linzer Torte. I grated the pieces of sponge cake into crumbs and tossed it with cake flour, homemade hazelnut flour (I milled blanched whole hazelnuts) and spices - cinnamon, cloves and freshly grated nutmeg. Then I gently held the crumbs mixture into the whipped butter and sugar mixture. I used "cultured butter" from Vermont, which is popular in Europe and has a richer and more complex flavor than typical American-style butter.
Considering that jam would get thicken during baking, the recipe thinned raspberry jam with some water before spreading on the torte so that the jam layer would remain smooth, not gooey. A good point. My raspberry jam was homemade simply with frozen raspberries, sugar and lemon juice. I didn't simmer the jam long to keep it a little runny, so I didn't add any water to my jam.
A traditional lattice pattern on top!
Almond slices for cute decoration.
Tada!
My
Linzer Torte was truly delightful. Yes, as the recipe promised, the crust was light, moist, delicate, spicy, nutty and buttery; the jam was bright, sweet and smooth. Both got married perfectly! I am so pleased with the result. Recently my good friend who is a native Austrian and lives in Austria told me
Linzer Torte originates from a city called Linz in Austria. Now Linz is one of many cities I would like to visit in the future. How lovely if J and I could try authentic
Linzer Torte in Linz!
