Vanilllekipferl

Christmas is approaching and I have started with baking our Christmas cookies!  To start things rolling, I have started to bake Vanillekipferl, small crescent-shaped cookies which mainly consist of ground hazelnuts and almonds.  They are flavoured with vanilla and have a fine sugar dusting finish.   

Ingredients for about 80 Kipferl:

50 g ground almonds

50 g ground hazelnuts

300 g flour

100 g sugar

a pinch of salt

200 cold butter

2 egg yolks

2 small packets vanilla sugar (Vanillin-Zucker)

½ cup fine sugar

Method:

Sift the flour on a kneading board, add in ground almonds, ground hazelnuts, sugar, salt, butter and egg yolks.  Knead dough until pliable.  Wrap the dough with a cling film and leave it in the fridge for about 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 190ºC (Fan 170º).  Take a bit of dough and roll it with your hands to form the shape of long pencils.  Cut the dough into 5 cm lengths and form each length into a small moon by bending both ends inward.

Bake the Vanillekipferl in the centre of oven for 10-12 Minutes.

Mix the vanilla sugar with the fine sugar thoroughly.  Once the Kipferls are ready and still warm, coat them very carefully in the sugar mixture.  Leave to cool down completely.  Store the Kipferl in between layers of pergament paper in a biscuit container in order that they do not break into two.

Happy Baking!