Vanillekipferl.

Like every year, I do the seasonal baking some weeks in advance of Xmas - because a) it would be way too much stress to try and get everything done in just a few days, and b) some of the cookies benefit from hanging out in a tin for a while. As in "for a few weeks" while.

One of the kinds that get better by sitting and doing nothing for a few weeks are Vanillekipferl (vanilla horns, more or less literally), which are an utter staple of German Xmas baking. Like most cookies, they are a shortcrust dough, and there's a gazillion recipes around. However, about all of them have one thing in common: They will tend to crumble if you try to form the dough by rolling it into small rolls to shape the typical crescent form. Which is... annoying, to put it mildly.

These days, there are workarounds: Special baking trays with the crescents, or cookie cutters. However, traditionally, these things are shaped by hand.

My method to shape them is a little less conventional, but also traditional - because the shape is what my one granny's Kipferl shape used to be.

Now, my granny (who died several years ago) was a rather, um, complicated character. Cooking and baking was very much her thing, and every year at Christmas, we would get several large tins filled with cookies of many varieties, stacked neatly by sorts. There were at least a dozen different kinds of cookies, and I loved them all - some more, some less. They were also lovingly decorated.

To this day, because the wonders inside these tin boxes made such an impression on me as a child, Xmas cookies are one of the things that makes the festivity for me. This means a large variety of cookies, in abundant quantity (because it seemed like lots and lots and lots to me, and there were lots, really) and of course with a lovely taste.

So when said Granny had a stroke and could not bake anymore. I decided that there had to be cookies, and they had to be similar to hers. However, my gran would not share her recipes - so I had to find my own basic recipes. I also found out very quickly that baking a large number of different varieties, and decorating them, takes a lot of time - so I cut down on said number (having a life and studies, and later a job, to also take care of). I couldn't find recipes for some of the kinds, and some others just didn't fit into the time slot anymore, and some I couldn't remember properly (because they might have been there some years and others in some other years), but the all-time favourites of myself, my mum and my dad stayed in.

Among these were, of course, the Vanillekipferl. Which, when my gran made them, had a very distinct shape - and one I never saw anywhere else.

It took me a while to figure out how to make that shape, but I finally succeeded. So this is how I make them these days:

Ingredients:

50 g almonds (without peel)
50 g hazelnuts
300 g flour
90 g sugar
40 g vanilla sugar (I use the stuff with real vanilla)
pinch of salt
200 g butter
2 egg yolks
powdered sugar to decorate

Make shortcrust dough out of the ingredients, let it sit in the cold for 2 hours (or longer, that doesn't hurt). Form crescents and bake for about 6 minutes at 180° C in a fan oven.

And this is how I shape them:

Form dough into rolls of about 3-4 cm diameter (I like my Kipferl small, just like I remember them). Cut rolls into slices of about 6-7 mm thickness.


Cut each round in half.

Then, using your fingers, round the upper middle of the half-round shape, and tweak the two corners a little longer. This results into something already vaguely crescent-shaped.


(The yellowish blotches are from the mascobado sugar I used this year, the black spots are the vanilla and hazelnuts.)

Now pinch the ends of the crescent even more - this will make them thinner and at the same time, the middle will get a little "nose". Like one of those children's book moons that have a nose.

My gran's Kipferl had that, so I was totally happy about them (and still am). If you don't like the nose, you can probably smooth it out... but for me, it is central to the whole shape. (Hah.)

As a last step, press the ends of the crescent inwards to get a compact shape.


And that's it. You're done shaping.

Once they are baked and have cooled off, dust them with powdered sugar, then store them in a box until ready to be eaten.

This is how mine looked in the end, this year:


Happy baking!

The other seasonal recipes that I blogged in the past are:

• Lemon Lozenges
• Chocolate-Coffee-Nut Spheroids
• Schokogongs (Chocolate THINGS) and how to make the praliné for filling them
• Marzipan-stuffed dates
• Gingerbread, without flour (Nuremberg type)
• Basic cookie dough (or five types of cookies from one batch of dough)