The Vanillekipferl are a Christmas cookie commonly found in Germany, but also in Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, and South Tyrol.
The dough is a shortcrust pastry with flour, butter, sugar, ground almonds (or hazelnuts), folded into a crescent shape (in German kipferl).
Once baked, they are coated with vanilla powdered sugar.
In Austria, it is said that they were created in the shape of the Turkish crescent moon to symbolize the Austrian victory over the Turks in 1683.
Do not confuse them with kipferl (or kifli in Hungarian), which are instead a sweet or savory specialty shaped like a croissant, made with flour, butter, eggs, water, sugar, and egg yolk on top, similar to our croissants or French croissants.
Very similar to other Christmas cookies..
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Economical
- Rest time: 1 Hour
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: 16 cookies
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: German
- Seasonality: All seasons, Christmas
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup almonds (or almond flour)
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 5.5 tbsp butter
- 1 egg yolk
- to taste vanilla powdered sugar
Steps
In a bowl, work the butter with the sugar.
Add the egg yolk.
Mix in the flour and ground almonds (or almond flour).
Form a ball and let it rest in the fridge for an hour.
Take the dough and shape it into sticks about 1.5 inches long and bend them into crescents.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F for 10 minutes.
Let cool completely and sprinkle generously with vanilla powdered sugar.
To prepare the Vanillekipferl recipe, you can use almond flour instead of grinding almonds.
