Vanillekipferl: German Vanilla Almond Crescents
Vanillekipferl are the crescents no German Christmas cookie tray goes without: they dissolve on the tongue and get rolled in vanilla sugar while still warm. The two things that decide the outcome: the dough stays cold and gets worked fast, and the sugar goes on straight out of the oven — once cool, it will not stick.
Ingredients
- 280 g plain flour
- 210 g cold butter, cubed
- 100 g ground almonds
- 80 g icing sugar
- 2 egg yolks
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- For rolling: 100 g icing sugar and 1 sachet vanilla sugar (or the seeds of 1 vanilla pod mixed into the sugar)
Method
- 1
Mix the flour with the ground almonds, icing sugar and salt.
- 2
Add the cold cubed butter and rub it in with your fingers until it looks like coarse crumbs. Work fast: if the butter warms up, the dough loses exactly the short, sandy texture that defines these cookies.
- 3
Add the yolks and vanilla and bring together without kneading, just until a dough forms.
- 4
Wrap and chill for 1 hour. Cold, it can be shaped; at room temperature it crumbles apart.
- 5
Take walnut-sized pieces, roll into 6 cm logs and curve into crescents, thinner at the tips.
- 6
Bake at 170 °C for 10 to 12 minutes. The tips should be barely golden and the centre still pale.
- 7
Mix both sugars. Leave the crescents on the tray for 3 minutes —straight from the oven they break— then roll them while still warm.
- 8
Store in a tin. They keep for two weeks and are better on day three than on day one.