Linzer Torte


 ( Almond Tart from Austria)

What a great day with a bit of warmth and sunshine in Stellies !
Was out in the garden with my morning coffee and saw one of the many Sunbirds feeding on some Salvia which have not been cut down yet still.



Been baking as well for my daughter who has a coffee shop in Hout Bay and seeing that they are feeling the “winter pinch” agreed to prop her up by supplying some cakes every week.. so here is one that is not often seen in Cape Town, except on the Slow Food Markets. The Austrian Linzertorte which is rather delicious and travels well as I have to schlep it from Stellies to Hout Bay.

250 g flour
250 sugar
250 ground almonds ( I use 2 packets ground and 1 packet chopped ones)
¼ tsp ground cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp coco powder
1.5 tsp baking powder

250 g butter

2 eggs


50 ml Kirsch or Plum spirit (if you don’t have either use Brandy)


1 cup raspberry jam







1 egg yolk ( to paint pastry)
Mix together all the dry ingredients.








Melt the butter

Beat the eggs

Add the Kirsch then the eggs and last the butter. Mix into a ball, and leave in fridge for 2 hours.

Heat oven to 165 deg C.
Flatten 2/3 of the dough into a 26 cm baking pan. Distribute the jam on top of the pastry.
Roll out the left-over pastry into long snakes. One to go around the edge of the cake.. and the others across on top of the jam in a lattice shape.

Bake for 50 minutes

Tip: before you spread the jam on the pastry, roll out a “sausage” and lay around the edge, press down with the arm of a spoon. This prevents the jam from seeping through while the cake is baking.

Now for the bad news….. I guess we have all “stuffed up “ at some point.. anyway here I took the ready cake out of the oven…   let it cool down a bit… when and did a nice set-up to take a pic ( even picked the last of the yellow roses for a vase) and then lifting the cake to set on a platter -------…. The darn thing was still too warm and broke in my hands. Hence only a photo of before it went into the oven (LL ) I was devastated as it turn out perfectamundo. My daughter will just have to wait till I make her another one.





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