Vanillekipferl or Austrian vanilla crescent cookies are tasty and crunchy cookies are part of the tradition of Nordic Christmas recipes, although these cookies in particular can be found in cafes and pastry shops in Austria throughout the year.
Their particular crescent shape or horns gives them an adorable and characteristic appearance.
Part of the Nordic tradition includes children leaving “presents” for St. Nicholas next to the advent wreath (which is a kind of nest of leaves and candles) and these cookies are the ones that children usually leave in Austria, while in Germany it is more common for them to leave pfeffernüsse cookies.
These vanillekipferl cookies are also called: Austrian vanilla crescent cookies, vanilla crescents or vanilla moons are believed to be so named to remember the Turkish crescent moon and thus remember/celebrate the victories of the Hungarian army over them.
A detail when preparing these delicious cookies: it is better that the almonds (or the nut that we are going to use, since it depends on the region if almonds, hazelnuts or walnuts are used) are not ground until they are a fine flour but there are pieces that we can “differentiate” and will give them a delicious crispy touch, but this on the other hand will make the dough more difficult to work, that is why it is VERY important to refrigerate it, and if when shaping them it gets very sticky, we can solve it by refrigerating the dough a little longer.
Will you prepare these cookies along with some florentines cookies, some cinnamon stars, pepperkaker and a quarkstollen these holidays?
Austrian vanilla crescent cookies
Equipment
- parchment paper
Ingredients
- 11 oz flour
- 9 oz unsalted butter at temperature
- 4 oz granulated white sugar
- 3 units egg yolk
- 5 oz hazelnuts or almonds ground
- 1 sachet for vanilla sugar
- powdered sugar
Instructions
- On a clean table we put the flour, the hazelnuts or almonds grounded and the sugar, mix well and form a volcano.
- Inside the volcano we put the yolks, and around the diced butter.
- With the tips of the fingers we work the dough from the outside in as if "pinching" it until we obtain a compact dough.
- Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350ªF
- Take the dough out of the refrigerator and separate it into pieces about the size of a walnut.
- With our hands we form thinner sticks at the ends, which when put on a baking can lined with parchment paper we will curve to give the typical crescent shape.
- Bake for 15 minutes.
- While cooking, mix the flower sugar with the vanilla sugar in a soup dish.Reserve
- When taking the cookies out of the oven, we will carefully put them on the plate with the sugar for a few seconds so that they are impregnated with sugar.
- Let cool and pass the cookies a second time for sugar and enjoy!