what a great thing, foodiesgarden turned one some days ago. i am really astonished that  one full year had passed and that i shared already four entire seasons of gardening and cooking with you.

i love to see, that you read my stuff and even more i love if you comment my writing. for myself, i discovered a lot of amazing things in other blogs during this first year. and i think as well there have been progress as well in my writing and food photography.

and it is amazing to have the possibility to observe our garden, saucepans and table through this year via the blog. thanks to the man´s patience while waiting until i am ready to picture our dinner until it is almost cold … thanks for reviewing my writing … and thanks for all the support.

and of course i am proud about one year blogging. to celebrate this, i bake a birthday cake, which is primarily the mans’ birthday cake, but the pictures and the recipe are foodiesgardens and a kind of birthday present for all my loyal readers.

it is a linzer tart. as it is with most classic dishes, there are millions of recipes out there. but everybody knows that only one of them is the real true one. mine is from an old austrian cookbook, which was edited at a time, where housewifes did not need a detailed recipe for all the good things to bring on the table, but only a reminder. you need flour, nuts, sugar, egg, butter, spices and red currant jam to bake a linzer tart. detailed like this is the recipe i have. so with every year of linzer tart it will become better and i will share my learning process towards the perfect linzer tart with you now …

250 g butter
250 g flour
250 g sugar
250 g grounded almonds
2 egg yolks
zest of one lemon
2 cloves
cinnamon
red currant jam

the red currant jam is made by my mum, as our harvest was too poor for jam cooking this year. it is very important for the linzer tart that you have red currant jam and no jelly, which is unfortunately more often available in supermarkets than jam. so the best way is do it by yourself. combine the washed fruits with the adequat amount of jam sugar and let it rest for one or two hours. than simply bring to a boil and cook for some minutes. once the jelly test is satisfying, fill in jars or go on with the linzer tart recipe.

first of all combine the soft butter and flour. than add the sugar, almonds, egg yolks and spices and combine all ingredients until you have a compact dough. wrap it in some cling film and allow to rest for 30 minutes in the fridge.

preheat the oven to 175°C. butter a cake tin. roll out one half of the dough and place in the cake tin. pour on the red currant jam and flatten. out of the other half of the dough you form thin ropes to make the edge of the cake and the decoration you place on the top.

the decoration is the most complicated thing of the whole story as the dough often is to porous to form thin ropes that are flexible enough to decorate. so you have to try out how it works with your dough. this year i added some water to the second halve of the dough and rolled it out with a lot of flour. it was no fun, but worked finally.

before baking, dap the top of the cake with some egg white. bake for about 45 minutes or maybe a little bit longer. the linzer tart is ready just the second before you think it is burned.

there are people saying linzer tart becomes better and better from day to day as it looses crunchiness and gets short. i personally prefer it crunchy. try it out and see.