Vanillekipferl, Austrian vanilla crescent cookies
Tender Austrian vanilla crescent cookies with ground nuts, dusted in vanilla powdered sugar.
Ingredients
- 250 gplain flour
- 230 gunsalted butter, softened at room temperature
- 2 largeegg yolks (optional; they make the otherwise dry and crumbly dough much easier to work with, but the cookies will not have quite the same melt in your mouth texture)
- 115 gground walnuts, almonds or hazelnuts
- 1 packet(1 1/2 tsp) vanilla sugar
- 90 gicing sugar
- small pinch of salt
- For dusting:
- 60 gicing sugar
- 1 packet(1 1/2 tsp) vanilla sugar
Method
Knead the flour, butter, optional egg yolks, ground nuts, one packet of vanilla sugar, 90 g icing sugar and salt into a dough. Keep the extra 60 g icing sugar and the second packet of vanilla sugar separate for dusting. Without egg yolks the dough is drier and more crumbly. Shape into a log, wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.
Preheat the oven to 175 °C.
Cut off small pieces of the dough and shape them into crescents. Place the crescents onto a non-stick or parchment-lined cookie sheet.
Bake on the middle rack for 12 to 15 minutes (depending on the size of the crescents) or until the edges begin to turn golden.
Combine the icing sugar and vanilla sugar. Let the cookies sit for one minute, then use a sifter to dust them with the vanilla-icing sugar while they are still hot.
Let the cookies cool completely and then give them a second dusting.
Once completely cool, store in an airtight container in a cool place. The underlying recipe specifies up to one week when using the optional egg yolks, or three to four weeks without them.
