Teahive Linzer Cookies

Ingredients

Cookies:

• ¾ cup butter
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 egg
• ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 ½ cup finely ground hazelnuts or almonds
• 1 ¼ cup A/P flour
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 8 ounces Teahive (microplaned)
• Blood orange curd (or substitute with Amour Tayberry jam or blood orange marmalade if not making the curd)

Blood Orange Curd:

• 1 1/4 cups of blood orange juice (about 5 - 6 blood oranges)
• zest of 4 blood oranges
• 2/3 cups of sugar
• 5 egg yolks
• 1/4 cup lemon juice (optional)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 7 tablespoons unsalted butter chopped into approx.. 1/4 in pieces
• 1-2 drops red food coloring (optional)

Directions

For the curd

1. Place your blood orange juice in a saucepan and reduce until you have about 1/4 cup left (it doesn’t need to be exact but you want it reduced by more than half and starting to really thicken up). Remove from heat and let cool.

2. Fill another saucepan a quarter of the way full with water and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. You will be using this as a double boiler so make sure the heat safe bowl that you will be mixing your eggs mixture in has several inches of space between its bottom and the top of the water. The water should never touch the bottom of the bowl or your mixture will curdle.

3. Mix the zest, eggs, and sugar into your heat safe bowl and beat with a whisk until the mixture becomes lighter in color. Add your reduced blood orange juice, lemon juice and salt to your egg mixture, whisking constantly with these additions.

4. Put the bowl over your simmering water and start whisking, making sure that the whisk catches every bit of your bowl. Whisk until curd becomes very thick and it coats the back of a spoon. You should be able to drag your finger through the curd and the curd won’t fill back in.

5. Remove the curd from the heat and add 4-5 pieces of butter at a time to the mixture and stirring to incorporate. Make sure the butter is fully incorporated before adding the next pieces of butter. If using food coloring to make your curd extra bright, add it in now.

6. Put your curd in a jar or bowl. Then place a piece of plastic wrap on the curd so it’s touching the top of the curd. This will keep the curd from forming a skin. Place in refrigerator and it will continue to thicken.

7. This will provide more curd than you need for the cookies, so use it on muffins, biscuits, pancakes... anywhere, really. You can remove the plastic wrap once fully cooled and seal with the lid to your jar or Tupperware bowl for storage.

For the Cookies

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cream the room temperature butter with the paddle attachment on your mixer, then add the sugar and continue.

3. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until incorporated.

4. Add the nuts and the Teahive and mix until fully incorporated.

5. Sift together the flour and baking powder. Add to the mixer and blend until just incorporated.

6. Knead the dough into a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 20 mins.

7. Remove the dough from the fridge onto a lightly floured surface. Sprinkle some flour onto the top of the disk as well. Roll the disk out to 1/8 in thick. Cut out hearts (or disks or any shape you want). Cut out centers of half of the hearts with a smaller heart cutter. Remove excess dough and re-roll to create more hearts. Again, cut out smaller hearts in half of those. Place hearts on a parchment lined sheet tray and refrigerate 15-20 minutes.

8. Bake each sheet tray of cookies (after they’ve been in the fridge) for about 10-12 minutes or just until the edges start to turn golden. Then remove and let them cool on a wire rack. DO NOT SKIP refrigerating the cookies before they go in the oven or they will spread too much during baking.