Cookie-jar love: hazelnut cookies

Every time K and I wonder down to the kitchen and home section of Selfridges London, we end up going home with a cab. Why? Because we always fall in love with a variety of kitchen gadgets, tools or just some funny decoration, and neither of us stops the other. This was the case last Saturday as well, when we were there to buy coffee and binbags, and came home with a cookie jar!! We also bough a few 'friends' to go with it and placed the jar in the kitchen window (no snow though). So suddenly the challenge was to fill it, which I got into immediately, by making a batch of my favourite chocolate cookies. But the jar deserved more, so another batch of cookies were prepared based on the linzer cookie recipe from here.
I modified the above recipe a bit by substituting the almonds for hazelnuts and using apricot jam. I also made the cookies in a star shape without cut-outs so that the cookie jar and the chocolate cookies stay jam-free.

Hazelnut linzer cookies

ingredients:

1 cup (110 grams) whole hazelnuts

2 cups (260 grams) all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup (227 grams) (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

2/3 cup (135 grams) granulated white sugar, divided

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large (40 grams) egg yolks

zest of 1 lemon

confectioners' (icing or powdered) sugar for dusting

1/2 cup (120 ml) apricot jam (can use other flavored jams)

preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and bake the hazelnuts for about 10mins. Take out, cool and take the skin off by rubbing them with a tea towel.

Once the nuts have cooled, place in a food processor and process with 1/4 cup (50 grams) of the sugar from the recipe until finely ground. 

In a separate bowl, whisk or sift together the flour, cinnamon, and salt. 

In the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the butter and remaining sugar until light and fluffy (approximately 3 minutes). Beat in the vanilla extract, egg yolks, and lemon zest. Beat in the ground nuts. Add the flour mixture beating just until incorporated. Divide the dough in half and shape into two rectangles about 1/2 inch (1.5 cm) thick. Wrap the two rectangles of dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm (at least one hour and up to several days).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and place rack in center of oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Remove one rectangle of dough from the refrigerator. On a lightly floured surface roll out the dough until it is about 1/4 inch (1 cm) thick. Using a 2 to 3 inch (5 to 7.5 cm) cookie cutter (round, square, heart, star, etc.) cut out the dough. Place the cookies about 1 inch (2.54 cm) apart on the prepared baking sheet.

Reroll any scraps and cut out the cookies. Remove the other half of the dough from the refrigerator and roll and cut out the rest of the cookies. 

Bake the cookies for 12-14 minutes or until they are very lightly browned. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.

While the cookies are cooling place the  jam in a small saucepan and heat gently until it has thickened slightly. Strain if there are any lumps in the jam. Let cool.

On one of the cookies spread  about a 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon of jam and gently sandwich them together