These traditonal German Christmas cookies are really easy to make and taste quite wonderful.
Preparation & cooking time 40 mins + 1 hour
Makes ~70 cookies
Ingredients:
100g Sugar
200g Butter or Margarine
½ Vanilla Pod
100g Ground Almonds
250g Plain Flour
3 tbs Castor Sugar (fine)
1 tsp Vanilla Sugar
Method:
- Cream together the sugar and the butter.
- Split the vanilla pod lengthways and scrape out the seeds, add to butter/sugar mixture.
- Add the flour and ground almonds to the mixture. Initially this will seem very dry.
- Use your hands to combine the flour with the butter and sugar until the dough forms a ball.
- Press the vanilla pod halves into the dough ball. (this way any seeds left on the pods will stick to the dough)
- Wrap the dough in some cling film and place in fridge for 1 hour.
- Heat the oven to 180°C.
- Roll the dough into a sausage shape.
- Cut small pieces from the dough and form these into little crescent shapes.
- Place on a baking tray and bake for 8-10mins or until the tips of the crescents just begin to go brown.
- Combine the Castor sugar and vanilla sugar in a bowl, sprinkle onto the kipfel immediatedly after they come out of the oven.
- Leave to cool on baking paper for 10 minutes, then transfer onto cooling rack.
Note: Don’t throw away the empty vanilla pod , rather place it in a spice jar with some castor sugar and it will infuse the sugar with a vanilla flavour, giving you vanilla sugar.
