My Omi would start her Christmas cookie baking the day after Thanksgiving. As a little girl, I would spend that weekend or the following weekends baking hundreds of cookies with her. Omi always remembered everyone’s favorites and made them all with love.
I was given copies of all my Omi’s cookie recipes, but for some reason, the Vanillekipferl were not amongst them. It was probably one that she knew by heart. I tried other recipes from the Donauschwaben cook books, but none were like hers and I started to get discouraged. One day, one of my mother’s friends gifted me a bunch of old cookbooks. The “Konig Bilderrezepte” was stained and falling apart, but it had a Vanillekipferl recipe inside. I decided to give it a try, and it was just like Omi’s!
It warmed my heart when my daughter recently asked me to bake the ‘moon-shaped’ cookies with her. It brings me great joy that she now associates Advent as the time to bake cookies. I know my Omi was smiling down from heaven as Louisa helped me bake her own favorite.
I found a trick to making these cookies melt in your mouth… use almond flour instead of grating your own almonds. I also like to make my own vanilla sugar than buying it. There are a couple ways to make your own vanilla sugar and the recipes are easy to find online.
Ingredients:
150 grams of softened butter
50 grams of sugar
210 grams of flour
75 grams of almond flour
Small amount of milk
Vanilla sugar
Preparation:
Lay the flour on a board, cut the butter in cubes and add to the flour crumbling it into the flour with your fingers. Add the sugar and almond flour and work it in with your hands. If the dough is too dry, add a small amount of milk and work it in until you have a dough.
Form small amounts of the dough (about 12 grams each) into crescent shapes.
Place crescents on parchment paper on a cookie sheet.
Bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes or until lightly browned.
Right when you pull them out of the oven, place them in a bowl full of vanilla sugar so that they are covered. The heat helps the sugar stick better but be careful with these delicate cookies while sugarcoating them – they are delicate.
Happy baking!
Karin Schulz
