Black Pepper Gingerbread with Tangerine Curd: A Piece of Cake #48

A little Linzer to finish out our cookie recipes.

This is the third of three new cookie recipes. If you missed yesterday’s, Lemon Cardamom Crinkles, here you go, and here’s Friday’s Spruce Spritz Cookie.

A Linzer is a cookie for all seasons; there are endless numbers of combos for the cookie and the filling. I make jam throughout the year, so I’ve always got a jar of something in the cabinet that could fill a little Linzer. One of my favorites I’ve ever made was a pretzel cookie filled with peanut butter chocolate ganache. But what’s more classic for a holiday cookie than gingerbread? 

If the dough cracks while you’re rolling it (it will), just gently push the cracks together and keep rolling.

I wanted to combine the flavors of traditional gingerbread with the shortbread texture of the Linzer cookie. You get the best of both those worlds here. And it’s topped with a little sparkly raw sugar for a nice crunch. In my opinion, good gingerbread is spicy gingerbread. And this Linzer take on gingerbread is packed with black pepper, ginger, and cloves. 

To offset these spicy, dark flavors, I made a punchy tart tangerine curd. The key to successfully filling this cookie is a fully cooled cookie and a cold curd. So you can make the curd up to a week ahead of time. Pull it out of the fridge right before you fill the cookies, it will keep it all tidier.

These cookies really come together with a little rest after filling. The gingerbread starts to soak up the curd a bit, making the cookie softer. If they stick around for a couple of days, they take on a super-tender texture. But if you simply don't have the patience or time to let the cookies set up, that's fine too. You can eat them like Andrew does: He pulls the cookies apart and eats these like a tiny open-faced curd sandwich. 

This dough, like most cookie doughs, can be made far in advance. You can keep an emergency stash of cookie dough in the fridge, and bake some off as you need them. And this dough is good for more than just a sandwich cookie: The flavors in Black Pepper Gingerbread could easily be pushed savory. Make a batch of just the “cookies” to add to the spread in your next cheese board.

Black Pepper Gingerbread Linzers with Tangerine Curd