The yummy crescent shaped cookies, traditionally baked during Christmas across Germany and the neighboring Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic, is one of the most liked and relished bakes in the Christmas cookies’ platter. Popularly called Vanille Kipferl, or simply put Crescent Cookies, in Germany, this popular cookie variety is prepared during the Advent, celebrated on four Sundays before Christmas.
This cookie gets its name from the shape that it is baked and the taste from the nuts that goes into their making, and of course, vanilla sugar dusting!. The commonly used nuts are walnuts, hazelnuts or almonds.
It is often considered to be a difficult bake. But, trust me, it isn’t! It can get a little tricky, but certainly not difficult and most importantly, the end result is something, which makes the effort all worthy of it!
It is also considered to be one of the grandmom’s bakes, as during Christmas, the grandmothers in every other household don’t miss to bake this!
What is very interesting and good about Vanille Kipferl is that, it stays fresh over the weeks and tastes better with every passing day!
Vanilla sugar is one of the important ingredients in this bake, and is quite a common European baking ingredient. Finding the same, outside Europe is either hard or very expensive. But that shouldn’t refrain one from baking this. There is a simple way to prepare vanilla sugar at home with easily available ingredients. Please refer the note section for it!
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Preparation Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Baking Time: 12 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour 42 minutes
Makes: About 70 units
Ingredients:
For the dough:
Wheat flour: 2 cups
Butter: 200 g
Powdered almonds / Hazelnuts: 1 cup
Powdered Sugar: 0.75 cup
Vanilla Sugar: 1.5 tsp.
Salt: A pinch
For dusting:
Powdered Sugar: 0.5 cup
Vanilla Sugar: 1.5 tsp.
Method:
Quick Video:
- In a bowl, mix butter, powdered sugar and vanilla sugar until creamy
- Add other ingredients mentioned under ‘for the dough’ to the above and knead well to form a dough (the dough will be a little flaky in nature and gets a little tricky to bring into a single mass! But trust me, its worth the effort to get the irresistible final taste and don’t add any extra butter / egg/ oil to knead further)
- Wrap it together in a cling sheet and refrigerate for atleast 1 hour (the more the better)
- Take out, knead well with your hands. Now there are different ways to make the crescent shapes. If you want, you can work on just half of the total dough and put back the other half to be baked later or after a day or two!
- Method 1 – Make small balls (of the size of small cherries) and gently roll them and carefully make the crescent shape
- Method 2 – Divide the dough into equal sized large balls. Roll them into large strings, as thick as of your index finger. Cut them into equal (approx.. 6-7 cms) pieces and make a crescent shape
The choice is yours! Place the shaped dough in the baking tray
- While you go with the above step, preheat the oven at 180 deg. C
- Place the crescent shaped cookies for baking at 180 deg. C and bake for 10-12 mins. Or until the edges turn golden brown. Don’t wait until the entire cookie turns golden brown. At this stage, remove from the oven and let it cool slightly for say 3 to 4 minutes
- In this time, prepare for dusting, by mixing the ingredients under dusting
- With a sieve, dust over the freshly baked cookies and let it cool and set completely
Relish the cookies!!! Stored in an air tight container, the cookies stay fresh, yummy for at least 2 weeks!
Note :
- This cookie is a very traditional and classic German bakes and one of the few, not needing eggs
- Refrigerating the dough before bake is a MUST! This should be done atleast for 1 hour
- Dusting is done, when the cookies are still warm
- The baking is done only until the edges turn brown. Don’t wait until the entire cookie is brown! It will be over baked
- The texture of the dough plays a very important role in the taste of the bake. It should be on the flakier side, yet combinable, to get the optimum taste
- Vanilla Sugar: Vanilla sugar is easily available in the super market racks across Europe. But outside Europe, it is not so.If you don’t find one, not to worry. You can prepare it at home.
- For 300 grams of sugar, you need a pod of vanilla bean. Mix the scraped vanilla seeds with the sugar and store it in an air tight container for atleast a week. Vanilla sugar is ready.
- Optionally, you can prepare it with the vanilla extract. 1 tsp. of vanilla extract to be mixed with 2 cups of sugar. Mix well and spread it over a baking sheet and let it dry, for say 3 to 4 hours. Once dried, you can pulse it. Vanilla sugar is ready!
Vanille Kipferl Stories:
Come October, it’s the beginning of the festive season and entire Germany gears up for it – Oktoberfest, Lichterfest, Advent, Weihnachten, Silvester and the list goes on!
Come November, you can see everyone pulling their socks up for the Advent. From the Advent calendars and gifts for kids to the Advent Kranz, the lights, the parties… It’s so colorful. Reminds me of Deepavali back home.
My daughter had ‘Bachtag’(baking day) in her school which she enjoyed a lot. Once she was back home, with all her excitement she narrated her experience with the Vanille Kipferl and I was all ears. It was a week day and I had to hold on to my excitement to bake it until the weekend to come.
The very next weekend, the work table was all hers! With her tiny little fingers, she mixed all the ingredients. I brought everything together using a cling sheet and placed in the refrigerator! Monitoring the time was her job, which she did religiously. We together made the crescent shape and baked in batches!
She was super excited and took the cookies to her school to share with her teachers and friends, and to proudly say – I baked it!
We baked the same, the very next week, along with other cookies for a small Christmas party in her school and in no time, the platter was empty!
Well, the reason behind bringing in the story here is, yes, my little daughter did really do it. And if she can, I am sure, it isn’t difficult!
I have now baked it at home for quite a few times and each time with different nuts. Each time, it tasted different and now, while writing the same, my mouth has already started to water!!! Soon, I need to bake it again!
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