A little Christmas baking
Last Sunday was a cold wet day, one of those when you would just like to stay in bed with a good book and maybe a hot chocolate. Those things are a mere utopia when one has a small child around so we took the chance to do some Christmas cookie baking. While we baked Saami happily played with dough rests. We made Vanillekipferl (a horseshoe-shaped almond-vanilla cookie), Zimtsterne (cinnamon stars) and Baci di dama again, since those from last time were already finished.
Vanillekipferl are one of the cookies Daniela always makes for Christmas. They're fairly easy. The dough is a modified and enriched version of shortcut pastry. One needs:
180 g. (6.3 oz) flour
70 g. (2.5 oz) finely crushed almonds
125 g. (4.4 oz) butter
1 egg
50 g (1.8 oz) sugar
a pinch of salt
vanilla flavoured icing sugar for dusting
The dry ingredients are mixed together, the butter is rubbed in and then the egg (beaten) is added to form a quite firm dough that should rest about 30 minutes in the fridge. When the dough is ready, roll it to obtain a cylinder and cut the cylinder in 5 mm (1/5 in) slices. These will be then rolled first into a ball and then, using the pressure of the fingers and rolling the balls on the working surface, into stubby cylinders. These will be bent to resemble horseshoes and baked at 180C/350F till golden. Once cool dust with vanilla icing sugar.
The Vanillekipferl were easy. What was really a pain was the Zimtsterne. I have to admit it is partly my fault. I should have followed my instinct instead of blindly believing in the recipe I found in an otherwise good German baking book. The recipe calls for 3 egg whites and 250g. (8.8 oz) icing sugar to be beaten together till firm. I had to start twice: the second egg I tried to separate had two yolks and one fell and broke into the egg whites. Egg whites don't get firm if even traces of yolks are there so I had to start again. After the second try I got a mess I could have used as glue but not terribly firm. A little part of my brain was trying to tell me that I should have beaten the whites first and then added the sugar, which is what all other recipes I found (the day afterwards) said too. Still I went on, stupid and stubborn, adding the required 250g. (8.8 oz) ground almonds and 1 tablespoon cinnamon to the mixture. The recipe said to roll the mixture to get a 1 cm thick layer. There was no way I could roll my "dough"! It was runny, sticky... a nightmare. So I added 3 tablespoon flour to the "mess" and got a dough I could work with, which I rolled and cut into stars with a star-shaped cutter. They baked for about 15-20 minutes (till light brown) at 180C/350F. The cookies turned out OK but not as chewy as I expected.
Afterwards I looked for the same recipe in other books and on the web and came up with an acceptable version which works. First beat 3 egg whites till really firm. Add tablespoon-wise the 250g. icing sugar. At this point remove 6-8 spoons of the mixture to be used as icing at the end. Add 300g. ground almonds or 250g. almonds and 50 g. maizena. Roll on a surface dusted with sugar and cut out with a star-shaped cutter. Bake as described above and once cool glaze with the reserved icing mixture. For next year :-).
Beautiful, absolutely bee-you-tiful! I love that kind of cookie, they're so Christmassy!
Posted by: clotilde | December 11, 2003 at 05:48 PM
Oh come on, don't make me blush! I'm just an amateur in Christams cookies. You should see what some people come up with here in Germany!
Posted by: Alberto | December 12, 2003 at 09:10 AM
I need to find out recipe for the Rococo.
Thank you
Posted by: Maria | February 10, 2005 at 05:42 PM