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These Salted Caramel Linzer Cookies consist of a buttery shortbread cookie filled with delicious, rich caramel. Theyโre dusted with powdered sugar for a festive cookie that is perfect for the holidays. I love to pair these with a gingerbread latte.
There’s something magical about baking cookies during the holidays. I love putting together cookie boxes with an assortment of homemade treats for the people I care about, and this one always makes the cut, along with my brown butter chocolate chip cookies, lemon crinkle cookies, and iced oatmeal cookies.
A Quick Note on Caramel
I hear this a lot from people. โI burned the caramel!โ โItโs taking forever to caramelize!โ Trust me, I do know it can be tricky and finicky, hence the reason why I like to cook the sugar with the water. The water eventually evaporates out of the mixture, and yes, it definitely takes longer. But I find it pretty much fool-proof. If youโve ever been scared to make caramel, this is your opportunity! If you hate the idea of making your own caramel, you can swap it out for store-bought dulce de leche to make Alfajores Linzer Cookies.
Ingredients You’ll Need for Salted Caramel Linzer Cookies
- Butter – The butter is the fat component. Creaming the butter and sugar together creates a tender cookie.
- Sugar – We’re using white sugar for a slightly crisp cookie.
- Vanilla – The subtle vanilla flavor pairs so well with the salted caramel.
- Egg – This binds the cookie dough together and gives it structure.
- All-purpose flour – This is the base for our cookies. A neutral flavor and tender crumb.
How to Make Salted Caramel Linzer Cookies
- Make the dough. Beat together the butter, sugar, and salt until light and fluffy. Then add the eggs, egg yolk, and vanilla extract. Add the flour in two batches.
- Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 1 hour.
- Roll out the dough until it reaches a thickness of about ยผ-inch. Freeze the dough for 5 minutes.
- Stamp out the cookies in the desired shapes you want to use, and stamp out centers of half of the cookies. Bake them on a baking sheet, 1 inch apart.
- Make the caramel. Pretty easy! Itโs just sugar and water cooked until it caramelizes. Butter goes in and then the heavy cream.
- Dust cookie tops with powdered sugar. Set them aside.
- Add the room-temperature salted caramel to the cookie bottoms and add a sprinkling of flaky sea salt, if you like.
- Add the tops to the cookies, and youโre all done!
Tips and Tricks
- Make this recipe ahead! I love to make this cookie dough the day before so it just eliminates a huge step off my plate. Alternatively, you could make the cookies the day before, store them in an air-tight container and then assemble them the next day. You have options!
- Choosing your cookie shapes. I went simple. Stars and circles. The more intricate the cookie cutters are, the more likely theyโll get messed up. I have learned the hard way. So I say keep it simple! I used a small round cookie cutter to stamp out the centers. A piping tip also works just as well.
- Swap out the caramel for store-bought dulce de leche to make Alfajores Linzer Cookies.
If you tried this Salted Caramel Linzer Cookies Recipe or any other recipe on my website, please leave a ๐ star rating and let me know how it went in the ๐ comments below. Thanks for visiting!
More Cookie Recipes
Salted Caramel Linzer Cookies
These Salted Caramel Linzer Cookies consist of abuttery shortbread cookie filled with delicious, rich caramel. Theyโre dustedwith powdered sugar for a festive cookie that is perfect for the holidays.
Ingredients
Cookies:
- 1 cup unsalted butter, (at room temperature)
- 1 cup white granulated sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg yolk
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
Salted Caramel:
- 1 1/3 cup white sugar
- 2/3 cup water
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, (at room temperature)
- 2/3 cup heavy cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Flaky sea salt
Instructions
To Make the Cookies:
- In the bowl of a stand-up mixer, add the butter, sugar and salt. Beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the egg, egg yolk, vanilla extract and beat once more until combined. In two batches, add the flour, being sure each addition is combined before adding the next one. Divide the dough in half, transfer it to two sheets of plastic wrap (itโll be quite soft!), shape into a disc and transfer to the fridge. Allow to chill for about 1 hour. Ideally it should be at least 3 hours.
To Bake the Cookies:
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Remove the first disc of dough from the fridge. If itโs super cold, it may need some time to come closer to room temperature, probably 10 minutes. Place the dough between two sheets of parchment and roll out the cookie dough to a 1/8-inch thickness. I find it easiest to stamp out the cookies when the cookie dough is very cold, so transfer the parchment sheet unit to a baking sheet and place in the freezer to chill for 5 minutes. Stamp out the cookies with a cookie cutter of your choice, being sure that half of the cookies (the cookie tops) have something stamped out of the center so we get that linzer effect.
- Transfer the cookies to the baking sheet, spacing them about 1-inch apart (these spread slightly). Re-roll the scraps to get a few more cookies. Repeat with the second disc of dough.
- Bake the cookies, one baking sheet at a time, for about 8 to 10 minutes, until lightly golden brown around the edges. Cool on the baking sheet before transferring to a cooling rack. Repeat with the remaining cookies.
To Make the Salted Caramel:
- In a medium saucepan, set over medium-low heat, add the sugar and water. Cook on medium-low heat until the sugar has dissolved into the water completely. Then, turn the heat to high and allow to cook for about 5 full minutes, until the cooked sugar goes from clear to light golden brown. At this point, lower the heat slightly and keep cooking until it turns a golden brown.
- Add the butter and whisk until it melts. The mixture will foam up a bit so donโt be alarmed. Next, pour in the heavy cream; again, itโll foam up and might seize but continue to stir it over low heat until it seems very smooth. If itโs a super light brown, feel free to cook it for about a minute over low heat until it turns a bit darker in color. Mix in the vanilla. Remove it from the heat to cool slightly. It will thicken as it cools slightly!
- In order the decorate the cookies, you want the caramel at a medium temperature, not too warm and not too cold. If it gets a bit cold, feel free to transfer it to a small bowl and stick it in the microwave for 10 seconds, just until itโs pourable.
To Decorate the Cookies:
- Transfer the cookies tops (the ones with the center hole removed) to a cooling rack. Dust with a liberal amount of powdered sugar. Flip the cookie bottoms (the ones without the center hole removed) over and smother a scant teaspoon of salted caramel onto the cookie. Top with a teeny pinch of sea salt. Repeat with the remaining cookies. Place the tops on the bottoms and sandwich the two together. Cookies will last 3 days when kept in an airtight container.
Notes
Tips and Tricks
- Make this recipe ahead! I love to make this cookie dough the day before, so it just eliminates a huge step off my plate. Alternatively, you could make the cookies the day before, store them in an air-tight container, and then assemble them the next day. You have options!
- Choosing your cookie shapes. I went simple. Stars and circles. The more intricate the cookie cutters are, the more likely theyโll get messed up. I have learned the hard way. So I say keep it simple! I used a small round cookie cutter to stamp out the centers. A piping tip also works just as well.
- Swap out the caramel for store-bought dulce de leche to make Alfajores Linzer Cookies.
Nutrition
Serving: 24g | Calories: 223kcal | Carbohydrates: 30g | Protein: 2g | Fat: 11g | Saturated Fat: 7g | Cholesterol: 32mg | Sodium: 29mg | Potassium: 21mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 19g | Vitamin A: 363IU | Vitamin C: 1mg | Calcium: 9mg | Iron: 1mg
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Like this Recipe? Please Rate & comment below!
Can you use dulce de leche?
These are delicious! I ended up tempting fate and used gluten free flour instead of AP flour and they turned out great! I honestly don’t think I would have been able to tell the difference if I didn’t already know they were gf!
Hello, thank you so much for your recipes! Love following you on Instagram. I made these cookies and they are great but I used different filling. I tried making this caramel filling twice and it isn’t fool proof for me . The first time I tried making it, it ended up a good color after a while of cooking but as I tried to let it get to room temp (before spreading the cookies) it turned hard as a rock. And 2nd time tried cooking I’m trying to wait for the sugar to turn more golden before adding the butter but then that turned to a rock between my mixing it. Could it be bc I’m using caster sugar?
Caster sugar would be the problem. It is finer than granulated so would cook down much quicker.
I love salted caramel everything!!!
1. the caramel recipe is DELISH!! I ended up having extra caramel which I am gonna use to either make cookies or in hot chocolate!
2. these cookies are the best!! I couldn’t stop eating them!! They’re so easy to make and sure to impress. Perfect treats for Christmas or any other occasion depending on how you shape them. The dough is quite sticky so placing it between parchment paper is a good tip! I popped the dough into the freezer before I stamped them and that helped a lot! Also popped them back in the freezer for a few mins before I baked them to prevent them from spreading too much!
Hi, the recipe doesnโt say what temp to bake the cookies at.
hi! it’s showing up on my screen. it’s right below “to bake the cookies” it’s 350F. ๐
This recipe looks so amazing, Iโm making it today! I also made your original apple pie and it was delicious!! Just wanted to point out that the oven temperature wasnโt mentioned in the recipe instructions so I just used the chocolate hazelnut linzer cookies instructions as reference! Thank you for your great recipes, I look for additional posts every day!!