Day 4: Vanillakipferl

Todays recipe is Vanillakipferl. This is typical german christmas cookie recipe, which is incredible  tender and short.

The dough is really easy to make, and you can vary it easily.

The only thing that slightly sucks about this recipe, ist hat it takes a lot of time to form the kipferl. If you want to make your life easier, there are baking tins especially for kipferl. The only thing you have to do with the recipe ist o make the dough thiner so that you can spread the dough on the tin.

The tin is made by Zenker, a very good brand, and costs between 10-15€ and you can easily order it on amazon.de.

If you don’t have a tin and don’t want to buy one, the forming oft he kipferl is really worth it. Whoever will try those cookies will love them and ask you for the recipe, especially if this cookie is not known in your country.

For about 80 Vanillakipferl you’ll need:

2 ½ cups (300g) Flour

1 Vanillabean,

½ cup(100g) Sugar

½ Tsp. Salt

3 Egg yolks

1 cup + 2Tbsp. (250g) Butter

1 cup(125g) ground Almonds

1. In a large bowl, sift the flour, sugar and salt. Add the ground almonds,  vanilla pulp and the egg yolks.      

Cut the butter in pieces and also add these.

2. Start mixing everything together either with your hands or with the dough hooks of a handmixer.

When everything is combined, dust your work space with flour, and work on you dough for a few minutes until it wont stick anymore.

Flatten dough into a disc, and wrap with plastic. Refrigerate for an hour.

3. Preheat oven to 350°F/180°C.

Get dough out of the fridge, cut of a piece and knead it for a few moments until it’s soft again.

Roll out into a thin sausage and cut of 3-4 cm/1,2-1,6 inch long pieces.

Now it becomes a bit tricky( it took me 

some time to get it right), because you have to roll the ends a bit thinner so that you can form a croissant like form.

Place the kipferl close to each other on a parchment paper covered baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes until they start to turn golden brown.

While they’re still slightly warm, sprinkle with plently powdered sugar.

When you want vary this recipe, just leave the almonds away and trade those with ground walnuts(which is sooooooo yummy and good), hazelnuts, peanuts etc.

And here you can see the finished product. You can store them in a cookie jar, which I did at first too, but because they're soo tender they'll brake easily. So you can put them on a cake stand, like I did, and so they're put on display and accessible all the time.

XOXO Owlicious