Not Your Mother's Linzer Cookies

Well, these are certainly not my mother's, as I don't ever recall seeing her (or my dad, for that matter) bake cakes or cookies at all.

This is the end result of my first attempt at making what seemed like a very simple Linzer Cookie recipe that received rave reviews in the New York Times. The dough consists of butter, flour, sugar and cinnamon. 

From this I was supposed to be able to roll it out, then use a cookie cutter to stamp out the cookie shapes. However, despite following the recipe to the "T", my dough turned out soft, gooey - the consistency of a Julia Child buttercream cake frosting - unrollable, uncuttable. I even placed the batter in the freezer (pictured here) and managed to cut out a few cookies that way, but after ten minutes in the oven, they would not hold together, instead, crumbling to dust when you tried to pick them up.

What a disappointment! I hope I can determine where this went so horribly wrong. I've written to the author of the recipe on the NYTimes, and hopefully, I will receive a response.